


Mail Order Spy

by 35grams (caxxe)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Agender Hange, Converging universes, Denial, Dissociation, Espionage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutiny, Mutual Pining, PTSD, Politics, Recovery, Slow Burn, Trauma, UST, modern/canon/future/western
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2016-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 12:41:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 24
Words: 230,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1941516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caxxe/pseuds/35grams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2091. Titans are no longer the frail oddities they once were. They're changing, growing. Governments aren’t changing with them. The International Military Police is tightening their leash. Erwin Smith orders a spy.</p><p>[Can be read with little or no knowledge of canon]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dearer, Colder.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Translations below.  
> 

                No bullet left its casing without his consent. No soldier who met his eye didn't offer him their bleeding heart.

                In the late 21st century, the Survey Corps was the only international paramilitary organization dedicated to the elimination of the titan threat. The nature of its enemy may have damned it under any other leader, any but Erwin Smith. Disparate personnel were united, resources won, and missions of such logistical complexity executed with such precision that some wondered whether the man was more machine than flesh.

                 Mike wondered. The commander's security chief flicked a pen between his fingers as he stretched his feet across Erwin's desk. He grinned lazily at the indignant voice on the phone. Mike moved it to his left ear as he scribbled on a notepad.

                "Alright, alright, slow down. I'd like to remind you that all this is already on file, en route, in progress, being processed, under inspection, or completed this morning," he said, then stretched. The phone erupted at arm's length. He waited for his enthusiastic caller to finish.

                "Enjoy the wine," he said, and hung up.

                Erwin did not enjoy the wine.

                He might have, if he were not intent on destroying Mike and Hange with an army's worth of paperwork for tricking him into a vacation. He should have suspected something at the glance they shared that morning, at the minor copy error in Mike's usually impeccable reports, or through general telepathy - now that he knew his closest friends would betray him like this, the laws of reality may as well follow suit.

               Contingency plans rattled in his mind. He paced the length of the hotel room. His fingers itched for a pen, a mouse, a keyboard, but he knew better than to record something even barely resembling Survey Corps intelligence on anything that wasn't all but manufactured under his personal supervision.

                He knew why he was holed up, and under guard, no less, in a too-large room two plane rides away from headquarters under the pretense of needing to attend an urgent meeting with affiliates who simply would not have accepted a video conference. Erwin was distantly impressed with his friends' resolve. They had taken advantage of a clause in their personal contract - one shared only between the three, at Erwin's insistence, which stipulated that if any two judged it urgent and reasonable to exert authority over the third, they would be granted company resources for that end. Erwin hadn't thought, at its signing, that Hange would use it to purchase the most expensive wine they could find. 

                It was last morning's meeting. It must have been. Erwin hadn't intended to transform it into an event, but nerves had been wrung for too long by the most recent titan incursions, and worse, rumors of infiltrators.

            A sensitive operation had gone south. No recourse remained but to use their last window of communication to command the ground team to take their own lives before the enemy, a faction of a radical collective of titan-worshippers, unraveled the agents until there was little left to strip away. 

            It was standard procedure. It had a chilling number of precedents.

            A single agent with a soft face and softer resolve had been beside himself with objection. Erwin had given him the floor. He as well as anyone wanted desperately to be proven wrong. Those who believed his soul didn't shudder at each death, each cry, each glassy pair of eyes that greeted him out of the skulls of returning POWs knew him least of all.

                He poured himself a glass.

                Death was a mercy in the hands of pro-titan radicals. Wind-lashed lips stung at the drink. The man should have understood. Erwin interrupted him before the man could further elaborate how one might slay beasts with appeasements and charity.

                "You have all heard the reports. You've seen their work. But you would offer beasts an olive branch with your right hand and then with your left when the first is torn off." His voice had been level, tone even, hands clasped loosely, eyes traveling politely from one agent to another, not lingering for long on any one face. A casual pace. His soles had tapped gently in the silenced room. 

             It was one of several reactions to his speeches. Nods. Sobs. Raucous applause.

            Most often, silence. 

            He analyzed every movement he had made, every expression. He poured another glass and slipped onto the balcony as a bitter wind lashed at his face. He downed the second glass too quickly. He had addressed the team as he always had. Calm. Collected. Contained. 

                Hange had tapped their foot, its irregular beat a departure from its usual rhythm. Mike ran his hand through his hair, revealing knit brows before they disappeared behind long, sandy bangs. Nanaba froze. Other agents showed their own motions, their own little vulnerabilities.

                Erwin left the balcony. A faint blush betrayed his third glass. He settled into an armchair.

               Densely compartmentalized details returned in waves. A tapping foot. A stiff back. The HR chief had just visited an ailing grandfather. A secretary had married. A savage twinge in his chest robbed Erwin of breath.

            He thought of Nile, who had once divulged a curious case to him when he was on the force. A cop with unprecedented dedication of a kind his district wouldn't witness for another generation had disappeared in his prime. For years, the ghost story bounced from one precinct to another. He was discovered years later, once, and then never again. Nile had sobered considerably by this point, had picked at his nails, had mumbled that in the precious few days that he was seen again, the man, all tobacco, bourbon and shuffling feet, revealed that it was when he'd caught his heart on its untroubled, merry beat at the sight of triple homicides and his mouth mid-yawn in a cannibals' den did he know in his hardened heart that he would never be fit for duty again.

            Erwin wandered from balcony to bedroom to bath and back again. The Rischter bombs. The three-day massacre. The Longhorn plaza shooting. Red, always red. Always deafening. Always senseless. He had thanked providence on the day the titans' and titan worshipers' atrocities had ceased to throttle his heart and carve lines on his brow. He'd sighed in relief at being allowed all the clarity and reason he desired to contain, to calm, to collect. To be reason in the void. 

            His soldiers must miss the sweat on his brow, the tremble in his limbs. They would sooner line up for slaughter, he thought savagely, than trust him not to become the beast he hunted.

            The hideous thought sobered him. Regret weighed on his bones. Erwin rested his forehead against a wall.

            His father's thin face came to him, his first words and his last, then sunbathed mornings and early graves and foolish sons. Business school. Mike. Titans. Graduation. Enlistment. Titans. Hange. The Survey Corps. Titans.

            A tapping foot. A stiff back. Erwin opened his laptop, emptied the bottle and decided to let the first thing that met his eye to distract him. The browser reloaded and Erwin was so thrown by the offensively flashing banner at the page's header that he opened it without question.

            Rouged cheeks. Pink lips. Translation software replaced the Cyrillic with barely cohesive English. A Russian mail order bride service. Of course.

            Erwin browsed through it lazily, eyes passing from one suggestive photo to another. One struck him, a red haired Moscow native.

                "Resource management," he muttered. He assigned a recent graduate with smoky eyes to human resources, a brunette in what remained of a nurse's outfit to security detail, and the winking blonde with muscular arms to ground operations. He played the game well into th evening. His finger slipped on the track pad every now and again. Border agent. Engineer. Public relations. Intern. Sniper. 

                His hand stilled on the next page. No personal statement. No contact information. One photograph. Two grey, humorless eyes. The figure was dressed conservatively, head covered, oversized mink coat pooling at their feet. He looked away, moved to the next profile and drew a blank, then again, and again.

                He returned to the lone photograph. Spymaster blared in his head.

                He occupied the role himself, together with his duties as company president and commander. The Spymaster was a little known position within the company or beyond, and for good reason - anything less and he would have been a decidedly poor one. There had been missions whose execution saved innumerable lives and gathered extraordinary intelligence but whose publicity would have strangled government funding into a trickle and incensed public opinion.

             It was a taxing responsibility, and one which absorbed as much of the company's resources as Erwin's own. It was for his agents, for his dearest friends who descended into hell after hell if only he wished it, for whom he would give his very soul.

               Assigning a spymaster to share the burden was a pressing concern, but an impossible one. Perhaps he complicated the task by considering only those who were no less than an extension of himself. Dearer than a lifelong friend. Closer than a lover. 

            He laughed at assigning the role to little more than a pair of eyes.

            Soon, the naming game become a bore. Erwin returned to the photo every so often. The eyes stared into the camera. He imagined their lashes stained with titan blood. He imagined them blown wide with victory. 

                His personal guard entered the next morning to find his things ready.

                Erwin carded his hands through his hair and allowed himself a grimace as a pocket of turbulence jolted the jet and inflated his already monstrous headache. He glanced through the serving of fresh tragedies and follow-ups to past ones in the morning news. An earthquake here. A shooting there. He skimmed through his phone to an interview with the daughter of a top Silvers man slain in a pro-titan radical raid of their headquarters not a week prior. The massive international crime syndicate was the latest to try their hand at slaying titan sympathizers to avenge fallen agents.

                The Survey Corps was not above alliances with lesser evils, but the Silvers would not be convinced. All efforts to woo the organization to join arms were met with apathy, derision. They had been untouchable. 

                He read the accounts of the gas attack at their headquarters, at the smoldering wreckage of their homes, at entire families with opened throats. The city sprawled beneath him. No one was untouchable.

                Having thoroughly exhausted Mike and Hange by ordering a company wide operations report to account for when he had been gone, Erwin was inclined to forgive them. He hadn't come home for a week since his one-night exile, engrossed instead with investigating the radicals' attack on the Silvers and tracking their shifting leadership. Local gangs began to reclaim territory. Government protesters bloated first one street, then two, then ten. Law enforcement was stretched dangerously thin, even with Corps reinforcements. Intercepted correspondences between government officials suggested the interference of the National Guard. The city roared for blood. 

                He heard a knock. He looked up from a cross-section of a Silvers warehouse. 

                "Mike-"

                "Do you see yourself?"

                "Got a mirror?"

                "Erwin."

                Erwin frowned at Mike's tone. He raised his head and leaned back in his chair with unparalleled delicacy. As if to spite him, the waning migraine erupted anyway.

                "If you could," said Mike as he walked into the office, "you would see that horrible expression. The one you've had all week. The one you have now, actually."

                "I'm fine."

                "I'm hurt," Mike said. His frame mercifully blocked the column of light shooting from the open door. "Think a line like that'll get rid of me?"

                "I wouldn't-," Erwin started as his head announced its readiness to rupture, "-wouldn't dare."

                A light thud and a couple of clicks drew his eyes to the desk. The room wobbled as he looked down. He hadn't even seen the glass of water in Mike's hand, nor the painkillers. 

                "You're no good to anyone dead on your feet. Go home."

 

                November had frozen his apartment. He tugged his scarf tighter around his face and hung his coat. He stopped paying for heating long ago. Erwin had considered shutting off electric in his walk-in closet of a flat, but the potential inconvenience trumped whatever paltry addition to the Corps budget it may have been. 

            He wondered why this line of thought was his tangent of choice as he realized it wasn't the light from the setting sun but a lamp burning in his bedroom. He heard pages turning. He heard a yawn. 

            Erwin moved to one of several floorboard safes. He unlocked one, withdrew a pistol and stalked toward the bedroom with practiced steps. Hange was working the night shift. Mike had just seen him home from the office. No one else had a key.

                He unfastened a tie clip and angled the reflective surface into the room.

                "Наконец-то."

                The low drawl echoed from the room and Erwin froze, staring at the figure reflected in the clip. The improvised mirror wasn't ideal, but he detected no weapon, only a man perched on his bed and going to town on every book in his apartment. Erwin entered, weapon aimed.

                His caution was met with a scoff.

                "Свалил куда то и даже ключ не оставил, вот тебе уважение к работе."

                Erwin didn't move. The man was sprawled over his bed as if it were his own. Books spiraled out in some unknown order and meticulously bookmarked, as if his own. He was taking notes in a notebook with one hand as the other traced items of interest in a pro-titan radical ethnography.

            A paralyzing thought struck him as he played the words back in his head.

            The Silvers' leadership was multinational, but regional leadership differed in makeup. New York's members were Russian by such a margin that Erwin had begun to study the language in earnest in an effort to appeal to the mob.  He wasn't so paranoid as to assume every Russian speaker this side of the Atlantic was a Silver, but when instinct hollered, he listened.

                "Эй, глухой? Убери пистолет."

            Erwin recognized only 'pistol'. He didn't move.

            No signs of forced entry. Alarms deactivated. Clean. Professional. He was also no stranger to ambush tactics, to lulling targets with warm welcomes or absurdities. The intruder frowned, though his pen still moved.

            "Kакого черта они мне дали американца...you speak English, at least?"

            Erwin regretted spending so long on Volume 2 of that language program. 

            "Who are you?" he asked evenly. The migraine surged again.

            He was met with rolling eyes, an extended hand and a demand: "Бумаги." He had not raised his head in the entire exchange.

            Бумаги. Papers.

            "What papers?"

            "Шутник попался.."

            Erwin released the safety.

            The intruder's eyes darkened at the sound. His eyes traveled over his face, still swaddled in the scarf, to the gun, then over the rest of him. The intruder became tense, predatory, then, as if by a switch, bored again.

            "My mistake. Wrong house, maybe," he said distantly. He moved to walk past Erwin and gave him a better look at his face, at his eyes.

            Erwin grabbed his arm. His hand had shot forward before he realized what he had done. "Wait," he said, and so softly the man was as taken aback as he. He lowered the pistol. Memories of a bottle and a hotel room returned to him. 

            "You my contact or not?" the intruder snapped and yanked his arm out of his grip.

            Erwin bulldozed past the question and its implications. "Forgive me, I just- there was a websi-"

            "Бля."

            "Pardon?"

            "Fuck," he said softly. His back hit a bookcase before he slid down to a thoroughly swept floor.

            An appropriate reaction might have been to call the police, or Corps personnel, or to restrain him. Erwin brought him a glass of water. 

            He was met with a knowing frown. Being no stranger to beverages offered by complete strangers where intrusions and guns were involved, Erwin poured a finger into a second glass from which he himself drank. Satisfied, the man grabbed the offered drink and eliminated it in one go.

            "Told him, сказал я ему, я же сказал Farlan and his fucking plan was-" After a beat, he laughed dryly, withdrew a folder from his jacket and threw it in Erwin's face. 

            His face paled with every word. A record of an order from a mail order bride website. He briefly marveled that, even a bottle or two under, he had the sense to register under a pseudonym, yet not quite enough to list an address that wasn't his own.

            "Oh."

            "Now say you did this drunk."

            Erwin said nothing, though his silence was telling enough.

            "Пожалуйста, retrieve head from asshole and get me a real drink. Tea. No sugar."

            The man followed him into his too-small kitchen and hopped onto a counter. His eyes traveled over him as if he meant to tear him apart. Erwin brushed against his swinging legs each time he moved to grab something, only to find that it had been rearranged or cleaned. He didn't make any mention of it, determined only to play his part - whatever it was - until his reeling mind could salvage this. Any of this. A dull ache attached itself to the back of his skull, but mercifully did not clamor for attention just yet.

                When the cup was in the intruder's hands and the taste to his liking - Erwin had chosen that moment to realize that the man might have made himself a cup a hundred times over if he was here as long as the extensive kitchen remodeling suggested - he sidled next to him on the bed of the joint bedroom and office and stroked a heavy, meaningful path over his thigh. 

                "So, _husband_ -"

                "That will be cleared up immediately," Erwin said, eyes frozen on the transaction records in his hands. 

                "I changed my mind," he said, squeezing.

                Erwin removed his hand. "Funny."

               "Who's laughing?"

               The man leaned forward, one hand tugging the scarf from his face as the other returned to his thigh. "I'm not. Commander."

            He knew him.

            Erwin brushed him away and stood. He opened his mouth to speak before a powerful shove hurled him into a chair. The man shot forward and pinned him to his seat. A cool switchblade kissed his throat. Grey eyes flickered on his pulse.

            "What luck. A commander. The commander." The man propped an elbow on one of his broad shoulders.

            Erwin didn't blink. "You're a Silver."

            "What," he scoffed in mock offense, "not gold?"

            "That's why you used the website," Erwin said. "It was the most covert way to cross the border without inviting suspicion. I tracked these exchanges before."

            The man watched him, waiting, unreadable.

            "The radicals decimated the Silvers' operations so thoroughly that they're transferring top personnel to the States," Erwin went on, "plugging the power vacuum, restoring command, order."

            Erwin flaunted his hard earned intel. He waited for a twitch, a tick, a darting eye.

            A tapping foot. A stiff back.

            "Their best agents," he said. He waited a beat to run through years of intercepted names, faces, dates, photographs, descriptions in his mind. Short in stature. A gymnast's build. Dark hair. Grey eyes.

            "You must have coordinated your exchange for months. That profile must have been live for minutes. Seconds. Am I right - Levi?" 

            A beat.

            "Feeling lucky?" Levi asked.

            Erwin basked in his control. He read years of cinched tempers and mastery of mind and form in what was, to the layman eye and ear, nothing at all. Not a twitch. Not a misplaced breath. He raised a hand slowly, telegraphing its movements to calm the blade still at his neck. Levi let him press two fingers to his pulse. He may as well be asleep. Erwin couldn't hope to master heart rate control like this.

            Dearer than a lifelong friend. Colder than the enemy.

            Erwin's hand fell away. Titans were gaining ground. Titan sympathizers had all the opportunity to plant any number of sleeper cells in the midst of unprecedented civil chaos. They would not be Goliath but a virus. A plague.

            Erwin imagined grey eyes blown wide with victory. 

            Levi shifted away from the barrel poised at his chest. Erwin had raised it at the first flicker of the knife. He withdrew it now. The knife left his throat. 

            "Strike a deal with me, Levi."

 

 *

 

            Perfect marks. A reload in a blink. Whistling shells in two. Arms full with trigger and barrel and eyes and ears shielded and muffled by too-large safety equipment, Levi could do nothing else but cock his head at an obscene angle as if to ask "Enough?"

            Erwin nodded from across the shooting range.

            A note. Handwritten, under the dishsoap. A time, a place. Erwin did not see Levi again for a week, but he was not gone. A drying plate. A dusted shelf. Erwin was intrigued but unconcerned. He kept nothing that might damn him personally or professionally in that apartment or on his person. He removed every firearm, alerted no living soul, reinstalled no alarm. The arrangement was unspoken, unreasonable, unsafe, and it was ideal. Levi's insurance was Erwin himself.

            He drove them back to the city. Erwin hadn't expected the man to humor his request. He glanced at his dark hair tangling wildly in the wind. Levi draped himself easily over the seat, head thrown back, a rippling cravat at his neck. Thin calloused fingers drummed on a seat rest. Scars ghosted over veins and knuckles. Erwin suspected his aviators weren't enough to hide his shameless glances.

            Levi caught one at last, presumably tired of pretending not to notice.

            "Satisfied?" Levi asked.

            "Very."

            "Didn't say what with."

            "Neither did I."

            Levi frowned and turned back to the road. "Contact will return in week, maybe two. Will tie the knot on your alliance."

             "Keeping your vow, then?"

            Levi glared. He leaned back and muttered, "Mine was subtler."

            With an eye on the traffic in the lanes ahead, Erwin said, "Your citizenship docs will be drawn up within the week. No interviews, no lines. No questions."

            "Not bad. Dashing husband still called Ernest Johnson?"

            The light changed. Erwin hit the pedal a touch too sharply. Levi smirked even as the force of it threw him flush with his seat. Glass towers pierced the sky. The leviathan mirrors reflected thick roiling clouds.

            "That I signed off with a pseudonym was a small blessing. Otherwise-"

            "Otherwise?"

            A favor from one, secrecy from the other. The exchange was simple enough. Yet neither desired what they claimed. Having spun far more damning press, Erwin would hardly be ruined by the exposure of a bizarre marriage, and he suspected not only that Levi assumed as much, but that a top Silvers agent could acquire his papers as effortlessly as ordering a latte. What they had truly exchanged was far more precious.

            "Otherwise," said Erwin," We'd need a caterer."

            "And invitations."

            "A venue."

            They had exchanged time.

            The car jerked. Levi thrust his head out of the window and flipped off a taxi. The driver returned the gesture and squeezed tighter into their lane.

            "Additionally," said Erwin, "any unlawful indiscretions to your name will be wiped from the record."

            "Shit, what a wordsmith...what make you think I have crimes to name? Think Silvers hire shitty spies?"

            "Consider it a gift."

            Levi looked away. He asked to be let off at an modest city park, a quiet thing cradled in the dappled light of several towering oaks, themselves dwarfed by skyscrapers. "Too much metal. Suffocating," Levi said at Erwin's questioning brow.

            Erwin made a habit of coming home after work but decided not to mention to an approving Mike or relieved Hange that he was only shamelessly eager to chat with his phantom houseguest through conspicuously opened books and reorganized furniture. Erwin suspected that nearly every item in the apartment had been moved a foot lower than it had been before.

            He entered the kitchen and froze. Erwin found his phone and sent a photo of the offending addition to the flat to the Corps' biotech chief. He checked the incoming text.

            _"Chlorophytum comosum! Cute!_ "

            _"In English?"_

            _"Spider plants! Impulse buy?"_

_"Something like that. Know anything about them?"_

_"Take me w/ u next time!!! Pretty common houseplant.  Cleans the air."_

Erwin shot them a thanks and considered the pair of hanging plants. Their long, narrow leaves swayed gently. He laid out an old newspaper, lifted them from their pots and sifted through the soil. His wandering palm caught on something. He pulled out a rolled up tube of paper, no longer than an inch, and unfurled it. It read:

            **_Dont shit yourself.  If I wanted to bug the place, would not be this obvious._**

**_Kitchen looked boring._ **

            Erwin replanted them.

            Within the week, the Survey Corps' official investigation into the attack on the Silvers reached its unsatisfying conclusion. Final reports were compiled and delivered to Corps' affiliates in half a dozen nations, primarily those which reported a substantial Silvers presence. Most were delighted with the non-news.

            "No more funding?" Mike asked as Erwin shut the board room door with a click.

            "Would it be interesting otherwise?" Erwin said with a wry grin. His hand danced over a security panel and sealed the room's three tiered entrance. Hange tapped their notebook absentmindedly. Moblit sat adjacent, hands planted stiffly in his lap, a touch starry-eyed at being granted access to such a sensitive meeting at Hange's insistence.  Mike and Nanaba sat opposite.

            Nanaba shook her head and said, "Smith, we gotta give the poor bastards in Ground Ops a break, that last mission-"

            "I know," Erwin said softly. He displayed a visual of each counter-terrorism ministry's response on an overhead monitor.

            Hange snorted at the chart. "Good on the good ol' U.S.A., giving us three pennies to track a lion that sucker punched a bear."

            "Who's who?" Moblit asked.

            Hange shrugged. "Not to stereotype with the whole Russian bear thing-"

            "Shit analogy. Titans are cockroaches," Nanaba said darkly.

            "Enough," said Erwin, an eye on Nanaba's white-knuckled grip on her pen. No one in the room, not even he, had given their own ground team the self destruct order. The command was Erwin's, but the final word, the last voice on the team's receiver, the voice of their team leader, their friend and mentor, was Nanaba's. Erwin didn't care to test her resolve to return to active duty immediately.

            "The radicals are watching. A public gala is out of the question. No dresses this time, no speeches, no famous donors. They cannot know we're stretched thin." He watched as understanding hit Hange first. Their theatrical knuckle crack alerted the others and charged the room with ignited glances.

            "Our mission is twofold," said Erwin, "Security overhaul here. Covert fundraising out there. Prepare to activate your agents in their respective firms and authorize intel trade on my order. Clean transactions. No surprises," he said, walking past Hange and tapping their shoulder pointedly, to which Hange mouthed to Moblit, "That officer had a Strelitzia!"

            "Remember, your agents must be convincing freelancers - untethered industrial spies looking to make a quick buck for stealing a secret or two. They cannot be connected to the Corps. Maintain communication at all hours and keep their helping hands on the inside safe."

            "A quick buck from Iaso Industries is a good five years for us," said Hange, flipping through figures in their notebook. It was a disarming thing for holding such sensitive intel. A barrage of bright nature-themed stickers adorned the cover. Nanaba's eyes widened a fraction. Mike leaned over and whistled at the figures.

            "Then you understand the need for discretion," said Erwin, "Money like this can be tracked to within an inch if a doorman even suspects the way your agent takes their coffee. I'll meet with each of you independently to discuss the operation further." He took in the thrumming room, the flushed, restless faces and added, "And take ten. Mike looks like he needs a drink."

            Mike clapped him on the back on the way out. Erwin jotted down the odd note to himself as all but Hange stretched their legs. He caught their furious scribbling and leaned over.

            "Kinematics?"

            "I know, I know, entry-level stuff, but-"

            "If brushing up on your physics is the least of your vices-"

            Hange laughed at that. Erwin let it go, but watched Hange as they filled one page, then two, then five. When Mike, Nanaba and Moblit returned, Hange shut the notebook and exhaled sharply, as if the act pained them, as if they began counting the seconds until they could throw the cover open again. Something in that tangle of variables and vectors wasn't letting them rest.

            He filed the thought away and waited for the door to click shut behind Moblit, having his own back to it as he reactivated the monitor display. It didn't.

            "Disgusting," said a chillingly familiar voice. "Dog house more secure than this."

            Erwin didn't turn immediately, willing with all his mind that the sound was a treacherously visceral hallucination. As if to spite the thought, a too-big suit and too-large scowl swept past him.

                "Any moron with suit and tie," Levi said, pinching his own for emphasis, "can barge in, say they are some foreign consultant scheduled to make appearance on the day, waltz past every security checkpoint in building," he continued, beginning to circle the table as Mike tensed and Nanaba braced a hand against the table, "and bam-" Levi whispered, came to a stop opposite Erwin, slipped a derringer from his suit jacket and aimed between the eyes.

                Mike lunged. Levi dodged and fired. Mike recovered and lunged again as Nanaba flew from her chair and Moblit yelped at the pop.

                Hange snorted and caught the confetti streaming from the toy gun. Erwin willed himself to breathe again and held up a hand to still the room. Moblit's fingers froze over his phone. Nanaba paused mid slam on the security panel beside the door. At Erwin's order, Mike released Levi, who somehow appeared no less smug hovering in Mike's chokehold as Hange picked apart the false derringer.

            "And just like that," Levi said, approaching the head of the table again, shoving a hand through disheveled hair, "No Commander. No Survey Corps."

            All eyes turned to Erwin. He could throw him out. He could imprison him. He could have reported him at first sight. He could have and he could have.

            "You must forgive our new security consultant," Erwin said to faces stuck in varying stages of horror, "He prefers demonstration over lecture."

            "I prefer," Levi said, "a marriage of the two."

            "I think," Erwin said, "We should give everyone some time to process your introduction. My security chief and I," he said, motioning to Mike, "would love to hear the rest this afternoon."

            Levi shrugged. "Of course. Radicals will politely ignore debilitating security flaws until lunch." Before he left, he turned sharply toward Erwin, slipped a finger through his tie, and adjusted the slightly off-center emerald clasp with a simple tug.

            He was nowhere to be found until that afternoon. Erwin expected as much, passing those few sweet hours with one hand at a throbbing temple and the other on a phone with a lockdown order on his lips. Mike's investigation into how he could have possibly slipped past their security checkpoints turned up nothing. No security footage. No retina scans. No fingerprints, no physical nor digital passes. He was a ghost. Erwin hid his face in his hands as Mike delivered the news. He couldn't stop the tug at his lips.

            "Erwin," Mike said knowingly, shutting the door to his office.

            "Incredible. An intruder who can just-"

            "Erwin."

            Erwin leaned back in his chair and shot Mike an even look.  "Explain, Chief of Security."

            Mike came over. He leaned over. He sniffed. "Same detergent," he said.

            "Mike?"

            "Same pine scented hardwood floor cleaner."

            "A coinci-"

            Mike sniffed again. "Same rosemary handsoap. And Erwin?"

            Erwin looked up.

            "Spider plants? Really?"

            Erwin shut his eyes and finally let the smile split his face. Mike sighed incredulously and wheeled over a chair to sit opposite.

            "I don't know where you found him, but he should come with a warning label."

            "He..." Erwin started.

            "But if even once," he said, "he pulls something like that fucking derringer stunt again, you'll need a new consultant."

            It hit him. Mike was afraid. Witnessing it was so rare, Erwin had forgotten what it looked like. 

            "He's unorthodox."

            "If that gun had been real-"

            "Never seen me stare down a barrel before?"

            "You know it's not the same," Mike said, standing. "And I wasn't fast enough."

            Erwin stood sharply. Mike threw his hands up.

            "Don't," Mike warned, "Let's head back. If he's not there when we are, he won't come back at all."

            Levi whittled away the next two hours explaining in exorbitant detail how their security architecture suffered more holes than the city suffered potholes. Levi had a finger on its hurried pulse that rivaled Mike's own, and Erwin found his eyes ricocheting from one to the other, an eye on Mike's folded arms and steeled face, then on Levi's lewd analogies and aggressive, full bodied-accusations of incompetency. The dialogue was largely between Mike and Levi, so Erwin was free to observe. His eye was drawn to Levi's neck, to the cravat that grew a thread more untucked with each round of inspection, every uncovered blind spot, each dozing guard. 

            At the meeting's conclusion and scheduled follow up the next day, Erwin straightened in his seat. As Levi passed, Erwin caught the offending fabric and tugged, turning Levi toward him mid stride. He tucked it back into his vest and traced a seam with an idle finger. He leaned back, halfway to enjoying the small victory when Levi, dropping his briefcase with an obnoxious thud so that Mike would turn, leaned in so close that Erwin caught the incriminating lemon scented detergent on his pressed shirt, the sharp mint on his breath.

            "Мы скоро увидимся," he said, words hot on his ear, and left Erwin alone with Mike, whose eyes began their laborious journey from the shutting door to Erwin's own.

            "Mike-"

            "Whatever game you're playing-"

            "I know," said Erwin. "keep it out of the-"

            "No. Win. And describe his face to Moblit when you do. I want it framed."

            Erwin's fingers drummed absently on the wheel on the ride home. He paused outside his front door, hand on the knob, phone heavy in his pocket. He stepped inside.

            Erwin found him in the kitchen. Vapor trailed from the kettle. Levi draped an arm over the back of his chair, the other holding a teacup by its rim. Another cup sat opposite, and a second chair stood tilted just so in invitation. Erwin joined him wordlessly, clasped his hands on the table, and looked from Levi to the cup meaningfully. Levi rolled his eyes, poured from Erwin's cup into his own and drank, pinkie raised mockingly.

            Satisfied with the authenticity of the offer, Erwin thanked him.

            Levi set his cup down. "I'm upset," he said.

            "I'm sorry to hear."

            "Your acting today was so well done, so exemplary," he started, eyes fixed hawkishly on Erwin, "that I begin to think was not acting at all."

            "I did play Hamlet in high school."

            "Good. You can speak to ghost of Survey Corps once it falls apart."

            "That's why you're here," said Erwin, flashing an easy smile. 

            "No, it's not," Levi said. "It is to tell you to keep your towering blonde dog on leash. Seven agents on my ass. Half are on flight to Mali, the other half to Siberia. All day took to lose them. If he want to know what I do at all hour, we can trade diaries. Then braid each other's hair."

            "I'm afraid he won't part with his."

            "I am serious."

            "So am I."    

            Levi watched him for a moment, blinking coldly. He sat back and finished his tea.

             "You must know by now. Would be disappointed if you did not."

            Erwin caught the flicker again, the daring glint that Levi couldn't hide from his eye as well as he could a tremble in his palm or a tremor of the heart. It wasn't difficult to guess what he meant, what Erwin discovered not a day after their agreement.

            "Chicago," Erwin said. "You were born in Chicago."

            Levi didn't smile, yet Erwin had never seen him so satisfied. His eyes dropped to half mast, shoulders relaxed. His voice drawled, a pleasant lilt playing with his accent.

            "You understand, then, Erwin Smith?"

            "That the deal was rigged in your favor from the start?" said Erwin, "I do, Pavel Nikolaevich."

            Levi froze.

            "Forgive me, or was it Ivan Teneyevich? Michael Ghernikov?" Erwin asked. He had called in nearly every last favor for clearance to pick international archives clean for every alias, each wanted pseudonym.

            Levi was silent. Erwin could all but feel the rush of recalculation in his mind. "Very good," he said finally. "But meaningless. Annoying. But meaningless. Was exposed before. Will be again. You have nothing. Now call off your dog. Alliances are delicate things, Smith. Would not want to be annoying."

            "I do hate to be annoying," Erwin said as Levi scoffed in disbelief. "But I do insist you not give my staff a collective heart attack again. Bad for morale."

            Levi tsked. "The 'leave my friends alone' bit? You are boring me." 

            "Call it returning the favor," said Erwin, withdrawing his phone from his jacket pocket, hitting speaker, and saying, "Is that right, Isabel?"

            " _Big brother, don't be mad but-"_

_"Isabel, give me the phone-"_

_"No! I wanna-"_

            Levi remained frozen during the static-drenched scuffle, eyes fixed to the phone as if it would vanish otherwise, already pale face becoming ghostly white. One voice was a woman's, American, the other a man's, his accent no lighter than Levi's.

            " _Big brother, the holes were faked, databases were locked, we-"_

_"It all came online right after we snuck in - is like they were waiting for us to-"_

_"You were right, brother, it was too good to be true-"_

_"He played us, Levi."_

            Levi's grip on his cup slipped. It fell and shattered. Erwin wasn't convinced it was accidental.

            " _Brother?"_

_"What was that?"_

            Levi eyed the pieces distastefully and stood, speaking as he grabbed a broom and swept the mess away, knuckles white. "How's the food?"

            " _Awesome!"_

_"What?"_

            "Beds?"

            " _I have three pillows!!"_

_"Levi, how is that-"_

            "Did they hurt you?" He sat again.

            " _They flicked my nose, brother, kill 'em!!"_

_"We alright. Jacked equipment and passports, but we safe. Is... nice to have bed again."_

            "No heroics," said Levi.

            " _Big brother, I'm sorry!"_

_"Прости пожалуйста, я так не хотел-"_

            "Shut up. I'll see you soon," he said softly and glanced at Erwin as if daring him to object. Erwin hung up and stood, finding another cup and setting it on the table, tea refilled. 

            Levi glared at it murderously. 

            You fucking-" he started, then paused. "You son of a - no. Ублюдок бля- shit eating- no," he muttered, rubbing his temples, chest rising and falling rapidly. "Бля. Two languages still not enough. Should learn German."

            "I-"

            "You," Levi interrupted, face alight with revelation, "shit on your own security systems. Lied to your own team. Deliberately. For a fucking alliance-"

            Erwin opened his mouth to speak.

            "No." Levi interrupted, eyes darting as though tearing through the day's events in his mind. 

            "For me."

            Erwin allowed himself a smile.

            Levi frowned. "Take off that shitty face. Gives me headache." He stood, cup in hand, and sat cross-legged on the counter. Moonlight bounced on the cup and lit strands of his hair. Long, bizarre shadows split the room. "Enough foreplay," he said, exhaling harshly, "Am ready for real deal."

            "Join the Survey Corps."

            Levi listened, expression blanked. 

            "Join and your aliases will be destroyed. Yours and theirs," Erwin added.

            "If not?"

            "You will be prosecuted. Your friends first. You will watch."

            "Cute," Levi said humorlessly, then, "and alliance?"

            Erwin cocked his head, throwing Levi a knowing look.

            "Ah," said Levi, "When'd you figure out?"

            "Today. The Silvers hid the damage well. If we don't leak to the press, the public might think for months that they still exist."

            Levi finished his tea and gave Erwin a sweeping look. "Creepy. Look like you won lottery."

            "No amount would compare."

            "Did not agree yet."

            "Haven't objected either."

            Levi stood from the counter and washed the cups. He turned. "That's my answer, then."

            On his way out, he said, "Take me on operation already, would like to die and never see that smug look again." 

            Erwin saw him out, waiting as Levi tied his boots. "You have somewhere to go, I take it?"

            "No, I sleep under stars," Levi snorted.

            "Didn't take you for a romantic."

            "Why else marry me?" he sneered, then sobered as he threw on his coat, eyes narrowed. "Why  _did_  you, mm?  And why not yet voided? Tax breaks? Entertainment? Waiting to see me in wedding dress?"

            "Too soon. It would draw attention, invite investigation. The company managing the service is surprisingly vigilant. As for the first question-" said Erwin, recalling that night, the silly game, it's not so silly conclusion. Levi watched him.

            "Would you believe me if I told you?"

            Shadows spilled from the kitchen. Shards of moonlight fell on them both. Neighbors argued upstairs. Muffled shouts and thuds saturated the dense silence. 

            "No," Levi said, and left.

            Erwin dreamed that night. He woke to a film of sweat clinging to his skin. Ice rattled in his veins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Наконец-то- Finally.  
> -Свалил куда то и даже ключ не оставил, вот тебе уважение к работе - Fucked off somewhere and didn't even leave a key; there's your respect for a job.  
> -Эй, глухой? Убери пистолет - Hey, [you] deaf? Put the gun away.  
> -Kакого черта они мне дали американца... - Why the hell would they give me an american...  
> -Шутник попался - What a joker.  
> \- сказал я ему, я же сказал - told him, I told him  
> -бля, как сказать... - Fuck, how do you say it...  
> -Пожалуйста - Please  
> -Мы скоро увидимся. - We will see each other soon.  
> -Прости пожалуйста, я так не хотел- Please forgive me, I never wanted-  
> -Ублюдок бля - Fucking bastard


	2. November 15

  
            Waves lapped at his tired feet. Seawater burned into ragged welts where metal and leather, the sinew of his borrowed wings, had pressed and slashed and rubbed skin raw for days and weeks and years. The sand gave softly. His sleeve rippled in his peripheral. Leafy seaweed coiled around his ankles and brushed, feather-light, against his toes. Blood, old and new, his own and not, radiated from his limbs in the crimson current, in waters that swallowed the angry reds and purples lashed into the sky. He had never seen the horizon. Not like this one.  

 

 

            The savage sands clawed at his skin as the boiling sun baked the black, velvety hair of his thundering mare. Bleached animal skulls greeted them, frozen grins blurred by their tremendous pace. Some might have been human. He didn't stop to check.

            He must have thrashed. Nanaba shook him awake. He didn't share.

 

 

            One. Two. Three. The lights winked, throwing them off. Four. Five. Ten. The twinkling void grew grey, misted. Twenty-five, twenty-six. They unclasped their cumbersome helm and threw it off.

            A page plastered itself to their face as they raised their head. The ink imprinted itself on their forehead, smudging the numbers on the sheet. They picked up a pen, fingers clumsy from sleep.

 

 

            Emerald shards littered the cold cement. One or two pierced cooling flesh, bobbed gently in pools of blood. He stood a hundred yards away, and the scope was long since lowered, but the red, the stench, the red, the red, it clung to his skin, filled his lungs, tasted filthy on his tongue. He would scrub for days. The shards, the blue, the green, the eyes. They wouldn't wash away.

            He woke gasping, the sound thunderous in the vacant apartment.


	3. Вот мужик

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've come from the future to tell yall to bear with the 'having just read acwnr and Must include in fic' moment here from two+ years ago but hopefully its not too copy pastey enjoy

            The Iaso agent was caught. In keeping with her cover story, the Survey Corps was not suspected in any official capacity. She was quickly and quietly deported, and although she would assume scouting operations in one of several Survey Corps satellite bases abroad, the unfortunate event stripped the Corps of a veteran agent, and robbed its coffers of its most anticipated haul.

            Not a day after, an intercepted correspondence between congressmen Richard Herlstern and Nikolas Lobov discussed a proposed investigation into the activities of the Survey Corps regardless. Hot air and petty grudges were the only evidence between them. Erwin committed their names to memory.

            Between orchestrating all but the breathing patterns of his operatives for the remainder of the spying operation, Erwin kept an eye on their latest recruits.

            "Like a flock," Mike said, having stolen Erwin away for a coffee break on a balcony overlooking the city. Their headquarters was truly a neural network.  Barracks downtown. Armories at the docks. Offices in the financial district. An attack on one would not touch another, Erwin had reasoned. It was he who made a lean, flexible creature of the Corps.

            "Mm?"

            "Gives a pointer to one or two kids and now packs of them are intercepting him. Haven't seen him turn away a single one either"

            Erwin watched Mike's expression darken.

            "He's learning their names," Mike said.

            "I know."

            "The ones who haven't gone on an operation yet."

            A gale rippled through their coats.

            "I know."

            Erwin courted his old habit of working through nights to ensure no repetition of Iaso. He left his office only to occasionally plunge himself into the season's first cold snap to cool his flayed nerves. He began to notice his heart's thunderous protest whenever his hands grew clumsy and his eyes swam, as if exhaustion were an omen and a bed, his grave. On some nights, the teeth appeared well before he shut his eyes.  Rows and rows.

            His fingers were still numb from the brisk November wind when he received the news. His ears and nose stung from the chill as he threw off his coat. The door opened and closed behind him, and a familiar drawl met his ears.

            "You have your money, командир. Rest of the agents came back safe. Can stop shitting about Iaso."

            A retort or two on Erwin's mind didn't quite reach his tongue. It was weighed down by chains of sleepless nights. He offered a simple thanks and decided to wonder later how Levi had discovered this before his contacts had. He ignored a heavy glance, a look he imagined was equal parts concerned and predatory.

            The hooks bore into his calves, his shoulders, his eyes. The little mites swung from their precious strings biting rivers into his back and trenches in his sides. He swung and swung and swung.

 

            Operations were surgical. Squads flew or drove into affected areas in pairs and threes upon confirmation of a Titan sighting. Equipment and vehicles were delivered by private couriers. Agents traveled in plainclothes. Weapons and comm equipment were strapped, bound and buckled to conform to the contours of the body. The barest rumor would invite the prying fingers of press and protestor and pro-Titan radical and their targets would scuttle away and burrow themselves deep into the flesh of the ailing village or port or city.

            Often, it was a local branch who would respond. In larger sightings however, the presence of the commander himself was requested.

            Erwin smiled warmly at the flight attendant as she passed. Falsified papers lined his pockets. Silicone flesh hid his own. Blonde hair lay flattened under false black. His travel partner flinched as he reached over him for the drink, foot tapping wildly.

            "Only an hour, Farlan."

            Levi was not easily riled, so Erwin committed that indignant scowl to memory when travel partners were announced. Mike hadn't been beside himself with joy either.

            Farlan tsked. The engine started. His breathing became short, labored. 

            "Черт **.**  Hate these things," Farlan muttered. 

            "Me too."

            The tapping quieted, as if it took all of Farlan's strength to frown at him as he did.

            "You?"

            "Yes. The loss of autonomy, of control. It's understandably unnerving."

            Farlan repeated the last word under his breath.

            "Unnerving?"

            "Uncomfortable," Erwin said, "Upsetting, frightening."

            Farlan nodded as his ears reddened. "Sorry," he said stiffly, "My English-"

            "-is perfect. Miles above many natives, believe me," said Erwin.

            The plane began to stir. The tapping slowed.

            "Hah. He said you would have silver tongue," said Farlan. He gave Erwin a scowl that might have been off-putting had it not been such an endearing imitation of Levi's.

            "What else did he say?"

            The plane was in the air.

            "Sorry, Commander, we would need a longer flight. And professional translator with strong stomach."

            Erwin considered Farlan's fond smile, the distant look to his eyes. "What do you say?" Erwin asked.

            Farlan dropped his eyes. He picked at his nails, settling into the weightlessness of flight one nerve, one vertebrae at a time.

            "I uh...that is, I-"

            "Farlan, I don't intend to trouble your relationship with your associates. If you wish it, we will speak no more." 

            Farlan laughed haltingly, muttering, "Золотой язык, a не серебряный..." to himself. He ran a hand through his pale hair, pushed it to one side, then the other. Nails bitten to the meat carved crescent moons into his palms as his eyes darted to mountains sprawled like veins beyond the window, like the capillaries of a leviathan. Erwin shut the blinds mercifully.

            He discovered that he had an admirer, of a sort. The mystery of what became of a number of logistical specs lost en route four expeditions ago was soundly resolved, as was the identity of the raiders who used the Survey Corp's own flanking tactics to so successfully ground and loot supply vans three expeditions ago. Farlan had repurposed the stolen plans, taken them apart and thrown them back together in iterations of a breadth that left Erwin wholly impressed. He listened and watched careful glances become shameless, full-faced grins in an hour's time. Erwin hoped Hange had as much success with Isabel.

            The Corps' leadership convened in a lattice of safe houses on the rural outskirts of the town, with remaining members insinuating themselves into the town proper. Preparation began at once.

            "Отлично **.** "

            Erwin looked up from his maps to an incredible sight. Levi had barged into the temporary office, frown and all. 'All' happened to include a dewy yellow tulip tucked behind his ear. Levi pointed to it and said:

            "If Hange convinced Isabel to become world famous botanist in one plane ride, I'm afraid to meet Farlan. Adopted him yet?" He picked the tulip, flung it on the broad desk and left. Erwin completed his remaining estimations with a tug at his lips. 

            Mike came in soon after, helmet at his hip. "Squads A through E in position, comm lines secure, bikes arrived.  Ready to- oh," he said, eyes catching the tulip.  "An admirer-" he started, lip quirking as he picked it up.

            "Don't-" Erwin started, but not before Mike sniffed and raised a brow.

            The motorcycles roared over gravel, grass, cement. Cool Atlantic air washed over the modest port town. A swollen moon glared over their heads. Mike rode at his right flank, Farlan at his left. They converged, parted and converged again through industrial sites, narrow alleyways and quiet suburbs. Sirens wailed well past when the last soul must have made it underground into one of many repurposed bomb shelters. The engine rumble electrified the air. It nearly swallowed the distant howls.

            "AA4. BF3. C34U. D6I. E5G," Erwin said into his earpiece, voice recognition software distributing each formation command to each respective squad. Insistent blinks on the console strapped to his wrist signaled each squad leader's order confirmations. Farlan watched him intently. They tore through the city, shepherding their strange flock.

            "We have visual! Two targets; eight foot, nine!" Hange announced giddily over comm. 

            "AA3. BF3. C343. D63. E53," Erwin ordered.

            "You'll do fine," Mike said to Farlan. Farlan's eyes darted forward as they rode into a jungle of steel and wires and putrid odors. Mike grew pale and chanced a withering look at Erwin for taking them through the factory district. Distant shapes wobbled through metal mazes distorted by their speed and fragmented by moonlight. They would ride parallel to an empty shipping yard in thirty meters. Twenty. Ten.

            "A1. B1. C1," Erwin ordered. Farlan tore away from the two and hurtled into the open yard. Moonlight ignited his back and glanced off an unsheathed blade. 

            Isabel burst into the clearing opposite. A pair of hideous, slack jawed beasts tore after her on bloodied feet and crooked hands. A sharp turn sent them sprawling, sliding, clawing at the hard ground for traction. Nothing was so hideous as the image of a human body scrambled, stretched and torn. The creatures wore humanity's image like an ill-fitting carcass.

            Farlan swept past, slicing one leg, two, three. Isabel circled. Farlan followed. They repeated the motion, their positions reversed. Isabel slashed a torso, an arm, an eye. Steam poured from the rapidly shutting wounds.

            A third bike hurtled into the clearing from an overhead platform. its rider leapt onto one titan as the bike slammed into the other. 

            Scarlet arcs chased a pair of black titanium blades. The eight foot fell. The nine flung the bike aside. Isabel roared in and out, blade glancing at an ankle and buckling the leg. Farlan crippled the other. The titan crawled toward the third rider at an unsettling pace despite its mangled limbs. The commander watched as Levi turned and slammed both blades through bloodshot eyes, unsheathed a third with a metallic screech, ducked behind a swinging arm and tore through the creature's nape in a sequence as effortlessly fluid as if it had been choreographed, as if the clearing was a stage. 

            A low whistle drew his attention. He felt Mike's eyes on him as he announced the next formation orders.

            He was doubly stunned, naturally, at Levi's clean cut, at the show of tightly coiled power and control in the man's agile frame. But for a moment, and hardly that, he heard the twang of wires, the hiss of gas. His right arm ached.

            The titans evaporated slowly, as if their corpses couldn't bear abandoning corporeality. Eyes hissed away first, then tongues. Skin peeled and popped and melted. Bones left last, crackling like wood on a flame, splitting and spitting until the boiling air swallowed them whole.

            Six at the docks. Three downtown. Five near a highway exit. Having purged the immediate threat, the squads returned to the safe houses to await reports from scouts scanning the city with infrared helms. A single undiscovered titan could level cities. Missing one was indefensible. The traditional holding period lasted three days.

            A day passed without news, then two. 

            On the evening of the third, Erwin reviewed final scouting reports and made preparations to depart. No sightings. The city was clean. 

            Mike cataloged their equipment and vehicle inventory alongside him in their makeshift command center. A muffled vibration interrupted their work. Mike slipped out his phone and answered it in the hall. He gave a few noises of assent before shutting it and returning. 

            "Lobov's promising a bombshell on talk shows. Something to push that funding cut bill," Mike said.

            "When?"

            "Tomorrow."

            Erwin frowned. The Survey Corps returned to headquarters tomorrow. If Lobov's stunt was as devastating as he boasted, his operatives could be compromised. They are most vulnerable post-expedition, and doubly so in transit.

            "That's part one. Two's confirmation from our guys that Lobov recently made contact with a former, uh... Silvers operative," Mike said, watching Erwin carefully.

            "As did we."

            "You ever think they might be one and the same?"

            "I'm sure of it."

            Mike froze. When Erwin said nothing else, he shrugged and rubbed his neck. "Whatever you-" He stopped.

            "We need to delay withdrawal," Mike said. Erwin watched his wrinkled nose. No equipment in this world or the next had ever detected titans as quickly or as that nose.

            "Threat level?" Erwin asked knowingly.

            Mike drew a great breath. "Red."

            Erwin stood. "How many?"

            Mike shook his head.  "I don't know."

            "Estimate," Erwin said. He locked away sensitive intel and threw on his coat.

            "I can't."

            Erwin turned at the admission. Mike looked as stunned as he felt. 

            "The factories," Erwin realized. "You said they wouldn't be a pro-"

            "There was no better route-" 

            Erwin tore out of the room, Mike's words trailing after him. He douibled the watch and redeployed their scouts. The night's stillness was lost to the sounds of resupplying and refueling. He approached every member of the watch, received reports from their own mouths. The base hummed with a nervous energy. Wide-eyed recruits darted about. Questions rippled through the ranks.

            His feet numbed from his restless pacing. More than once, Mike attempted to recant his reaction, to persuade him that he had made a mistake, that he had overestimated. Erwin dismissed him each time.  

 

  
            Erwin had a visitor when the night had been most still on the second holding day. He rounded a corner and found him, arms crossed and leaning languidly against the wall.

            "How do you find the Survey Corps?" Erwin asked amiably.

            Levi didn't answer right away. He cast his eyes down, as if deep in thought. 

            "Do you play?" Levi asked finally. 

            "Some pool. No one will have me for poker anymore."

            "Instrument, I mean."

            "I did, once. Saxophone."

            "Huh."

            "You sound disappointed."

            "Figured you for violin. Now cannot make shitty "stringing people along" joke. In my head all day."

            "I could learn, to that end."

            Levi watched him.  "First learn to be careful what you say to Farlan," he said. The corridor felt tighter.  
  
  
  
  
            "Confirmation!" the scouts yelled. The three-man squad rode up to the safe house. They didn't disembark. Erwin met them, hearing their report as Mike and Nanaba approached.

            "An aberrant," one said. Mike inhaled deeply. 

            "A jumper," said another, "Can't pin coordinates, but it should still be in the factory district. If we hurry-"

            The scout shot up from his seat and tumbled stiffly, thrashing as the business end of the taser Mike had aimed silenced the imposter. Mike snapped off the wires and tied his wrists as Erwin restrained the second, and Nanaba, the third. Mike scowled deeply, nose wrinkling.  

            Nanaba bound them as Erwin knelt by the first man. 

            "Where are my scouts?" Erwin asked.

            The man jostled in Mike's grip."They are with our father, the great Kronos, they-" He winced as Mike's grip on his hair tightened, scowl deepening all the more. Mike had once described what pro-titan radicals smelled like. How much blood must they spill, he had said, for its stench to cling to them forever.

            "Where are the rest of your members?" Erwin asked.

            "Saved. We will all be saved. We will be-" His eyes traveled to a point beyond Erwin's shoulder, widening as if in rapture. He broke into a hideous peal of laughter that shook him bodily. Erwin turned. The commotion had stirred several operatives and drawn them to the scene, Levi among them.  
  
  
  
  
            The corridor's dim lamplight flickered over their heads.

            "Isabel and Farlan seem not to mind being one snapping jaw away from missing an arm or leg, " said Levi, "What have you been feeding them, mm?"

            Watching him, Erwin preferred his anger cruel and deafening to a live wire silently grasping for a spark.

            "I could ask you the same."

            Levi's eyes narrowed. 

            "The recruits have taken to you," he clarified.

            "They've taken to knowing how not to be titan shit," Levi sneered.

            "Teach them."

            "So that brats like Paulson and Rowe can come home in pieces? Бля," he seethed through clenched teeth,  "what a fucking waste, just - just shoot the fucking things."

            "Too fast."

            "Poison them."

            "Impervious."

            "Bomb them."

            "Collateral."

            Levi rested the back of his head on the cold brick. The wall might have melted. "Almost 22nd fucking century," he spat. "We throw a station on the fucking moon before removing face from ass long enough to learn what these things even fucking are."

            Erwin exhaled deeply, as deeply as if he had been holding his breath for days. Levi was understanding.

 

 

  
            "No!" Nanaba yelled. One radical wriggled in his binds and clawed through a back coat pocket until it closed around something. A high pitched signal rattled through their heads. Nanaba kicked the transmitter from his hands and struck him unconscious.

            Mike jerked as if struck. "Thirty," he said, nostrils flaring.

            Erwin ordered imposters detained and started shooting formation orders into his mic. Blades clacked on the backdrop of roaring engines. The recruits jumped at the first of the inhuman shrieks.

            Mike rode alongside Erwin as the two attempted to flank the approaching horde. Orange flashed on Erwin's console - Hange's squad was short one member, as was Flagon's, Levi's squad leader. Mike shot him a look.

            "Give the search order," Mike said. The line crackled. 

            "Not yet."

            "That radical knew him, Erwin, he saw him before!"

            "I know."

            "He's a traitor."

            "We'll find out."

            "Erwin."

            Erwin hated that tone. He hated deceiving Mike more, but should the line be tapped, revealing the barest detail would sink the entire operation. He asked so much of him.

            "Trust me."

 

 

            Erwin maneuvered the squads around the incoming horde. Hange's reported visual first, giving Erwin precious seconds to predict the titan's movements and order corresponding formations. Red flashed at his console. A man down. Two. Three. 

            " A43. BH2. C3H2. D93. ER7. Code E4H, Code E4H."

            E: Ambush. 4: Titans. H: Terminate.

            Mike's head jerked in his peripheral.

            "Report," Erwin ordered.

            "I-"

            Mike was never indecisive on the field. Erwin eyed a distant titan.

            "Erwin-"

            It was again, that tone. Distant, a touch guarded.

            "Permission to investigate a disturbance due south. Alone, sir."

            It was a suicidal request. Erwin would have dismissed it on a clear summer's day with no titan in sight and an army at his heels. An ache ran flush down his arm again.

 

 

  
            They stood at the precipice. He pushed.

            "They're growing," Erwin said softly. Levi blinked.

            "Hange confirmed it before the operation. An inch every two to three years, on average. We don't yet know how dynamic the growth rate is. It could be accelerating. How long until we see titans at five meters? Ten?"

            Levi scoffed. "Sure, now say sixty.".

            "I hope I never have to.  You've seen it yourself. Titan sightings used to be matters of national, international security, they used to be top secret. Now, they're the darlings of the evening news. They're being normalized and infantilized, spun into medical oddities or hallucinations because they haven't appeared in Washington or Dubai or Moscow. Not yet. Not publically."

            Levi raised an eyebrow. "Not publically?"

            "When they could still be mistaken for humans, they did. Paramilitary campaigns only began twelve years ago. Before that, there were plenty of cases in cities and capitals. 2067, Cairo. 2052, Shanghai. The '77 New Years' attack."

            "Those were just riots."

            "That's what you were told."

            Levi's jaw worked. "So tell me, командир, why Titans not been sighted in large city since then."

            "The titans may have changed, but so have we. We're more careful, more efficient. We have to be. But we were too good. Our investors recognize a marketing opportunity much more willingly than they'd acknowledge a sincere threat."

            "So Survey Corps has nothing to do with trend of titan theme parks and limited edition action figures."

            "It does not," Erwin said, the sound almost a snarl. "We will send the growth report to Congress and international affiliates," said Erwin. "But-"

            "You expect them to be in trash by afternoon."

            "If not by mid-morning."

            Levi sighed forcefully.

            "What do you want from me?"

            "The Survey Corps is muzzled and I intend to free it. To make the world see before-"

            It had made sense at the organization's conception, when Titan sightings were few, far between, and the creatures themselves not a fraction as deadly as their modern counterparts. Over the years however, the legal binding, the clause that forbid the Survey Corps from divulging any titan intel to the greater public became antiquated, then deceitful, then destructive.

            "What, before we start building fences and walls?"

            "Gated communities have already started. Quietly, slowly. But it has already begun."

            "What makes you think they will believe?"

            "The public already senses something isn't right. Amateur videos have surfaced from the last few titan incursions, and they're becoming too numerous to track en mass. What they see does not match what they are told. The public is ready. Their support is more powerful than any single philanthropist, any donor with money in one hand and stipulations in the other."

            Levi looked him up and down. "You want to give them a show."

            "I do."

            "A show needs a star."

            "It does."

            "I'm camera shy."

            "No. You're not."

            "Why should it work? How will you even do it?"

            It worked. Levi was no longer negotiating his role but the terms of the part.

            "Trust me."

 

 

            "Go."

            Mike's bike roared away. Erwin's arm burned, but he rode on. He swerved past ten-foot titans and made contact with each squad to confirm when to summon reserve members.

            Squad C reported a cluster of eleven foot titans due north, fifteen strong. Erwin reformed the squad's positions. He ordered a small contingent to lead the creatures into the bulk of the Survey Corps' readied blades. As he called out the formation, a shadow flitted in his peripheral. He pushed forward, driving erratically to drag the curiously small titan out of the woodland and into the moonlight. He unsheathed his blades.

            He took his eyes off the shadow to make the jump from a hill into the valley below.

            His ears registered a sudden, deafening roar. His vision went dark; his breath caught. The titan could not have closed the distant between them so quickly. Erwin couldn't have underestimated their distance. He adjusted his feet and prepared to leap off the bike. Time crawled. Arms closed around him. A powerful, singular force ripped him from the bike.

            Erwin pierced the earth with his outstretched blades to break his fall and turned. A blade pushed into his neck and shoved him to the ground. "Squad Leader Hange Zoe assumes command," he ordered quickly, then removed his helmet and shut off comms.

            "Levi."

            Something was wrong. Levi breathed haggardly from the chase, chest rising and falling rapidly. But there was no triumphant glow in his flushed face, no victory in his hollow eyes.

            "You were betrayed," Erwin chanced.

            "Заткнись." _Shut up_.

            "When did you realize," said Erwin, eyes unmoving from the murderous grey, "that Lobov wanted both of us dead? That he conspires with radicals? That your boss-"

            "Заткнись, бля. You released these fucking things, only you, only you would kill your own men to make a po-

            "You don't believe that. Those aren't even your words. For all his paranoia, he didn't count on us having a simple chat. Lobov once made a similar accusation. Uncanny, how similar. He underestimated us. He underestimated you."

            "The marriage," Levi said. "The announcement he was blabbering about, it was our marriage. He found out, he-"

            "I know."

            Levi stared.

            "It was voided, and the record stripped of its existence the moment he promised his grand announcement. I waited until he acted, yes. I never imagined he'd enlist terrorists." The blade pressed harder.

            "The offer must have been incredible," Erwin said softly. The blade broke skin.

            "It might have been, if they....if you hadn't- if you-"

            "Who killed them?" Erwin asked. He grasped the blade at his throat. Surely Mike hadn't been too late.

            His console blinked wildly. Green, red and orange flashed in a display that might have been beautiful if it wasn't a network of agents fighting, agents lost. Levi's jaw worked. He glanced at the console, at lights blinking red.

            Levi swallowed thickly. "I was-"

            Erwin shoved the blade away. "Maybe. But you forget the titans. It's always the titans. It will always be titans if men like Lobov bleed us dry of the resources we need to understand them."

            "He would keep the world in the dark," Erwin said, standing, "while he and his powerful friends exploit these creatures for their own gain. It's happening already, if they're in bed with pro-titan radicals, if they've moved from gutting the Survey Corps financially to slaughtering us outright. Will you kill me and serve these men? Farlan told me what you did with our stolen plans. How many lives you saved. How many poisonous deals you sabotaged. You were already doing this work, our work."

            Levi stiffened as Erwin drew nearer. The console blinked rapidly. The moon slipped behind roiling clouds.

            His blade fell.

            Erwin turned to straighten his bike when a hand on his arm jerked him back. Levi raised Erwin's hand for him to see. It bled. Erwin hadn't realized, hadn't felt a thing. Levi tugged his cravat free and wound the cloth round his palm hastily, tightening it to stem the flow.

            "Your arm's been fucking up, командир." Levi's harsh movements brushed past the console screen, "I would check it out if I-"

            "Move it, C squad! AP5!" Erwin's earpiece vibrated with the shout. Hange's voice. The cluster was terminated.

            "Erwin Smith assumes command," Erwin announced.

            "-They're safe, H--ge, but b----d u--" The comm crackled around Mike's report.

            "Mike, repeat," Erwin said. He configured Levi's unit to flash green again, and the two were off.

            "Is--- an- ----a- ar- b-t- s---"

            More reports trickled in, then poured in a crackling, unintelligible flood. Erwin ordered a retreat.

            The two roared through the town as dawn broke and dispatched any remaining titans. The work was clumsy at first. Both were eager to lead the other in the paired dance of bait and hook that squads were trained to perform. By the fifth titan, their technique became cleaner, tighter. They switched from one role to the other with a second's notice, with the barest signal. They were an organism, a machine, or something else entirely, something words could only diminish, something thought might only ruin.

            Erwin didn't understand when Levi muttered over the engine roar, "Вот мужик."  

            As they returned to base, the console blinked again. A pair of red units became green.

            "Levi-"

            But he had already seen.

            Levi tore off his bike and hurtled into the hastily raised medical tents.

            "Tent four," Mike yelled after him as Levi flew past.

            "You did it," Erwin said with no little awe.

            "Barely. Pair o' jumpers hauled them off, had them dangling off a rooftop. One's blinded, skull fractured. Other needs amputation."

            "But they're-"

                "Alive."

            "Mike," Erwin started carefully, "How?"

            "Dumb luck, hell if I kn-"

            "No - how did you know? They must have been hundreds of meters away."

            Mike rubbed his neck and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. For a maddening moment, as if outside of time, Erwin thought he saw a strap across his chest, a harness across his shoulders. The apparition flitted away, curling into nothingness like smoke.

                "It's alright," said Erwin, clapping a hand on his shoulder, "Later."

 

 

**Three nights ago**

 

                The sun beat heavily on the fractured plains. The dozing pair behind him stirred on their horse. The boy blinked himself awake first, which was a blessing and a half, he thought. The girl was a tempest.  

                The deputy had limited sympathy for thieves, but had he the choice between raiders and titans, he'd bring the kids home for dinner.  

                "That you, deputy?" The kid said, voice cracking. The deputy grabbed a canteen and left his black mare. The boy froze as he approached. He grabbed at the offered canteen, but rather than sating his own thirst, he shook the girl awake and shoved it into her hands. She palmed it and without opening her eyes, flung it back and drank greedily. The boy yanked it back, had his fill and tossed the empty canteen to the deputy. The girl might have grown lilacs instead of hair - eyes shut and the deputy might have mistaken her for a garden. She dozed off again as her companion rubbed his eyes.

                "Thanks for the rescue and all, but our bosses don't exactly get along. Hope you got a plan, mister."

                "That don't concern me, long as you're in one piece," said the deputy. "Though I'd have more faith in Sheriff Smith."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> командир - Commander  
> Черт - Shit (actually a general-purpose expletive)  
> Золотой язык, a не серебряный... - More like a gold tongue than a silver one...  
> Отлично - Excellent  
> Бля - Fuck  
> Афигеть - Unbelievable (approximate)  
> Заткнись - Shut up.  
> Вот мужик - What a man.


	4. Smile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [Bosnian Rainbows - Eli](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srU5osUsn6I)

 

 

_He was a spectator in his own mind. He must have paid handsomely for the view._

_Each night, his limbs became thralls of another master. He could not even begin to imagine how to struggle against the silencing binds. He could have sooner drowned the sun in the Black Sea. He could not fill his lungs, could not open his treasonous mouth to yell "Move" at the man ten stories down, a man who might have melted in the blaze of camera flashes and spotlight glares if he weren't a beacon himself. Coiffed gold. Full lips. A sculptor's envy, a temptation._

_The rifle's reticle quartered the curve of his peaked lapels. It halved the curve of his mouth. Levi felt a gloved finger curl, his own. Felt resistance. Felt a push._

_Felt hesitation._

_His eyes were caught by another's, snared by a playful blue._

_*_

_"-Breaking: Congressman Lobov resigns in disgrace-"_

_"-accused of conspiring with pro-Titan radicals-"_

_"-outpour of evidence points to questionable breeches in national security-"_

            Erwin was no stranger to slipping leads to independent journalists or doctoring ratings figures to gently revert a studio's spin. He had arranged media hits before. This was a slaughter.

            Whatever became of the two men who bedded terrorists to eliminate the Survey Corps when they couldn't wring its neck with their own hands, they could never show their faces again.  Erwin dearly hoped for a lengthy incarceration as much to spare the men from violence as to spare the world from theirs. He had advised federal authorities to place their families into witness protection. His instinct proved correct. So hungry was the public for a face and a name to hate with abandon that their vitriol spread like a contagion. Twenty-four hours hadn't passed since the news broke of their traitorous designs and their families and colleagues were paying for them many times over.

            It was primal. Reptilian. But he could never condemn them their fury. He knew it himself. He shared it. The commander watched warmthless morning rays crawl over his arm.

            A familiar face peeked into the office and brought him out of his thoughts.

            "Farlan."

            "Don't get up!" Farlan said. He held up a hand in warning and walked smoothly, expertly, to an empty chair opposite Erwin and tapping it once with his cane. He twirled his chair on one leg before sticking the landing mid-spin and folding his cane with a theatrical snap.

            "How are you?" Erwin asked, voice swelled by a broad grin.

            "Commander-" Farlan started. He sat straighter, hands on his lap, choreographed, rehearsed. His hair had been sheared off, but it had grown enough to almost cover the white surgical scar across his scalp. Tinted glasses obscured whatever remained of his eyes. They would have been as calculating as the rest.

            "Titans seem not to have scrambled brains too much. Doctors liked aptitude tests. They think I need to stay another month, but I will go insane if I do. I know I-" he faltered somewhat, accent growing thicker, "-I am no use to you on bike anymore, but I can still help, I-I can-"

            "We would love to have you back," Erwin said. Farlan was silent for a moment. His brows came down.

            "But you have not seen test res-"

            "No need," Erwin said. "That you offer your heart is enough."

            Farlan did not speak immediately. Slowly, shyly, he smiled. He stood and offered his hand. Erwin shook it. Mid-shake, Farlan grew uncertain. It was a peculiar uncertainty, as if he anticipated a scolding.

            "Levi knows," Erwin chanced.

            "Right." Farlan said simply, forcefully. Erwin hadn't considered that Farlan would return without Levi's blessing.

            "Did he not visit you?"

            "He did!" Farlan said indignantly. "He did, a lot, god, every day....he was just...different. I-" His hands wrapped one way around his cane, then another. "I think we scared him, Is and I. I just..."

            "The first operation changes everyone. Levi is no different. You can't blame yourself," Erwin said softly. "You can't regret."

            Levi had reported for duty every day since the operation. He mentored recruits, revised formation patterns and reviewed incident reports in preparation for their next. While he lacked a title, he acted the part, shouldering the duties of an officer in all but name. He followed orders incomparably. His insight was invaluable to operation architects. Yet he was inconsolable in his own way. He was in shock.

            Erwin had seen enough operations to know the pattern well. The first operation destroyed whatever peace one had with the world, with oneself, with their fellow man. It fractured convictions. It troubled the soul. Yet in time, his agents filled their fissures with grander convictions and sharpened hopes.

            Farlan smiled apologetically. "If only this, if only that," he said to himself. He looked up and straightened.  "No more of that. Have to come back," he said, and added in a conspiratorial whisper, "Have to keep Levi and Isabel out of trouble."

            Farlan was assigned to Mike's security division. While most squad leaders led a single team, whether combative, recon, medical or otherwise, a number of singular personnel coordinated two, three, even four at a time. Nanaba held the record with six at her command. Her medical squad could slay a titan as expertly as her combat teams could cut and suture.

            Farlan was amused at his lot, but Mike assured him that few built better defenses than those as eager as he was to expose their cracks.

            "Come, I'll show you around," said Mike, who had joined Farlan's briefing the following morning.

            When the door shut behind them, Erwin returned his attention to Lobov's trial. He had ripened the evidence for four weeks. He had fashioned arguments and counter arguments as his silence goaded Lobov and Herlstern into making still more damning errors.  They contracted spies with loose lips. They hired hitmen with sloppy aim. They hadn't so much dug their own graves as christened the cemetery in their own names.

            Erwin came to a window. Buses and cabs darted around one another like cells jostling through the city's arterial roads. The glare from the rising sun blinded him. The rays slipped under his eyelids as they shut, and all he saw was red.

            He picked up a muffled discussion in the hallway. Three voices, and Levi's among them. He must have come to accompany Farlan.

            Elevator doors opened and shut. More muffled exchanges, but sharper. Confrontational. Someone shouted.

            Erwin came to the door and opened it. He stared evenly as four barrels converged on him. Mike stood between Levi and the mass of them as a fifth restrained a handcuffed Farlan aiming for a winning backward kick into his captor's shins. They were plainclothes officers in slacks, pencil skirts and ties. They might have been on their way to a meeting had they not been waving glocks.

            The man nearest Erwin gestured to the door with his weapon and said, "Please go back inside, sir."

            Erwin stared fixedly, deliberately at the man, who visibly shrank as Erwin raised a hand to curl around the cool barrel of his pistol and lower it. They wore no badges or identifying insignia, but he didn't need them. He had only to see a face once to remember it.

            "I would ask if you were raised by wolves," he said, addressing the group, "but I can't imagine they'd have worse trigger discipline than this. Rodriguez, fix your grip. Shoulders back, Beckett."

            The named men betrayed themselves with accosted looks as if disbelieving that they had been singled out. As they sheepishly corrected themselves, a sixth rounded a corner and stomped forward. He looked no different, though he had the air of a commanding officer with his proud chest and swaying limbs.

            "Erwin, you son of a bitch."

            Mike snorted. "Mornin' to you too, sunshine."

            The man rolled his eyes and said, "There a reason your noses are in Intermipol business? Again?"

            "Your business becomes mine, Nile, when your men apprehend mine," Erwin said.

            That silenced him. Nile's eyes darted from Erwin and Mike, then to Levi and Farlan. His expression darkened. "Something's not right," he said lowly. Farlan snorted.

            Erwin leaned in to keep the others out of earshot. "Anonymous tip?"

            "Son of a bitch," Nile whispered. He dismissed his unit. Levi shoved past Mike and tore Farlan from his captor as Farlan kneed the agent for good measure. Mike gave Erwin a meaningful look as he escorted Farlan out, nodding and making affirmative sounds at Farlan's indignant swearing.

            Levi held a phone to his ear, a livid glare aimed at Nile. There was only one person he could be calling.

            "Where is Isabel Magnolia?" Erwin asked quickly.

            "We're processing her, but if-" Hands shot out and gripped the lapels of Nile's jacket. Levi slammed him against the wall. Nile seized his wrists.

            "You have no authority to process Survey Corps personnel, свинья," Levi snarled.

            "You're giving me a lesson on authority? You think I don't know who you are?"  Nile spat.

            "Enough," said Erwin. "Nile, release her."

            "Not before-"

            "Ears full of shit?" Levi shoved him again. "Or still patting yourself on the ass for ambushing a fucking blind man?"

            Erwin felt a familiar lance of pain in his arm, and an accompanying sting of guilt for neglecting to address it. He rubbed his wrist and said, "Why don't we-" but faltered for a moment, inhaling sharply when, between one rapid blink and the next, a familiar leather harness  flickered across Levi's chest. Another remnant of another sleepless night. Nile was preoccupied with Levi, but Levi himself shot a glance to Erwin's wrist at the sudden intake of breath.

            "Isabel will be released," Erwin said to Levi, then to Niles: "Immediately."

            Erwin ushered them into his office.  Nile mumbled into his phone. Levi hummed at the sudden flood of texts in his own. "Usually she signs with five heart emojis," Levi said by way of confirmation. "I see three. I'm pressing charges."

            "Enough," Erwin said, interrupting Nile's feigned offense at Levi's feigned outrage. As he took his seat and flipped open the laptop, he glanced from one to the other and said, "I take it introductions are unnecessary."

            Erwin had assumed Levi may have crossed Intermipol agents as a Silver, but to have somehow personally offended a bureau chief amused him more than it should have.

            "What tipped you off?" Levi said as Niles grumbled a "Correct."

            Erwin flipped the monitor around and cycled through the landing pages of most major international news networks. Lobov's disgraced face was plastered across each one.

            "Nile, two days ago, I presented evidence against Lobov and his partner to the Secretary of Homeland Security. Intermipol's bureau was notified shortly after. Were you briefed?"

            "Sure," Nile confirmed after an uneasy pause. Erwin watched him. He didn't overlook Nile's iron grip on his crossed arms. 

            "If there's something-" Erwin started.

            "Exactly how much," Niles said, peering at Levi, "clearance does he have?" Levi threw him a scowl, but  turned to Erwin as if he wondered the same.

            "As much as you and I," Erwin said simply.

            Nile didn't press further, but gave him such a look that Erwin suspected this wouldn't be the last he heard of it. Nile confirmed that it was indeed an anonymous tip that alerted Intermipol to Levi's presence within the Survey Corps, yet tellingly failed to mention that he, Farlan and Isabel were no longer Silvers agents but legally recognized members of the organization. What's more, the caller would have to have known of Nile's history with Levi as a Silver to contact him specifically, and gamble that the too-familiar name would rouse Nile to act without contacting Erwin to verify his identity.

            "It's Lobov."

            "Erwin-"

            "We know what sort of pull he had. Pulling your history would have been easy."

            "Jesus..."

            "But this was desperate. A last ditch move."

            Nile snorted. "Good riddance. Probably placed it between the Feds' first and second knock. Shit," he said, rubbing his chin, "Rats in Intermipol. This'll be hell to file."

            "Nile."

            "I hate that tone, Erwin."

            "This isn't the end of it."

            "Of what? He's going away. I saw your circus act with the case evidence, Smith, he's gone. Out."

            Levi cut in. "Баран **.**  Ears definitely full of shit. He was a pig. Sloppy. Next person who decides to make pro-titan radicals their attack dogs will not be."

            Nile shuddered. "You can't be serious. Who else would-"

            Levi interrupted. "Hey Erwin, when's the sequel to Titans Reborn coming out?"

            "July," Erwin said tersely.

            Nile frowned. "What does that-"

            "Hold on," said Levi, whipping out his phone, "forgot to check my "Titan Terror" score. Keep going." A scandalized Nile whipped his head from him to Erwin, his mouth a perfectly upturned U. Erwin allowed Levi's theatrics but he decided to clarify.

            "Profit, Nile."

            "Oh, come on-"

            "Have you seen the cartoons?" Erwin asked, "The apps, the toys? We're infantilizing them. Normalizing them. Soothing public outrage with spectacles and distractions. The titans have better PR than the White House."

            "You're overblowing it, it can't be that b-"

            "Funding for research and operations is so abysmal, the Survey Corps can relieve the CIA at a moment's notice with all the practice we have acquiring it ourselves. Someone has been splitting public opinion with contradictions. One week, they're real. The next, a myth. The one after, a movie franchise. Meanwhile, anti-titan sentiment is discredited by fascists and radicals planted in their marches and demonstrations. Someone has been sabotaging us gently, quietly, and for many, many years. Nile. Someone doesn't want the titans gone."   

            Nile absorbed Erwin's words in silence. He uncrossed and crossed his arms and sighed heavily. "Intermipol only ever handles the human threat, the radicals, that's all we've ever done. What do you want from me, Smith?"

            "Keep your eyes open."

            He knew Nile wouldn't be convinced. Not yet. Not soon. He needed only to plant the idea. Nile was a good man. Cautious to a fault and first to anger, but a man of discipline, of order.

            As the door clicked shut at Nile's departure, Levi rounded the desk, gestured at Erwin's arm and said, "Well?"

            "Don't worry abou-"

            "Farlan and Isabel and all of these brats are under your command. Your shitty arm is my business," he said, "if it in any way-"

            "It won't," Erwin said. "You'll remember," he added, "that they are also under the direct command of two of the most qualified individuals in the Survey Corps."

            "And who commands me?"

            Erwin had the impression of being cornered, devoured whole. His arm throbbed traitorously, and though he swore it hadn't twitched, Levi's eyes darted to it and back, as if feeling the sting himself, as if Erwin's nerves were his own.

            "I command you."

            "Then don't give me a reason," Levi said, "to doubt you."

            Erwin raised his head a fraction. Levi mirrored him, perhaps unconsciously.

            "I won't."

            "You make a lot of promises."

            "I intend to honor them."

            Levi looked away. An odd look passed over his face. Then it was gone. 

            "Good."

            It was the most Levi had spoken to him since the operation. The air was thick between them, yet Erwin felt a weight lifting all the same, one that must have settled in his chest in increments, one he hadn't realized was there.

            Levi was silent for a moment, seemingly expressionless but for a forming line on his brow. Erwin's fingers itched, aroused by a tactile memory. He had touched them to his neck, had felt the man's mastery over his beating heart even as his cover was blown that night. Erwin didn't believe he had become better at reading him, not so soon, but he wondered if Levi was letting him see.

            Or he may as easily fabricate each telling quirk, calculate every revealing breath.

            Erwin's own words soured in his memory. 'I command you,' he had said. For all his revulsion for egotism, he was no less inebriated with it. Command him? Command him, truly? He wouldn't know where to start. But he wanted to know.

            "He blocked them," Levi said distantly. Erwin waited. Levi scoffed.  "All of them.  Could hardly see from behind that blonde mountain."

            "Did you tell him to coddle me? " Levi asked suddenly.

            "We prefer 'looking out for one's own'."

            Levi was silent at that.

            "Here I thought Mike was made of titanium," he finally said.

            "Afraid not."

            Levi tsked. He looked Erwin up and down and said, "You have something to tell me."

            Erwin grinned. "Still tapping into my comms?"

            "Still letting me?"

            Erwin decided against contesting that. He sobered and said, "Humanity will not survive another Lobov. Neither will the Survey Corps. We can't keep waiting for Intermipol, for the CIA. We can't afford to be idle."

            Levi crossed his arms and said, "Melt down the shield, make a lance."

            "Exactly."

            "You'll lose a shield."

            "If we aim well, we won't need one."

            "Can't aim without a target."    

            "We'll smoke them out," said Erwin."I'm giving advanced notice to Mike, Hange, and yourself," said Erwin. "This campaign will be unlike any we've orchestrated before.  Following the initial briefing, you will all be given a week to decide if you agree to assume key positions."

            "Then we're at war," said Levi. "Cute."

            "I hate to overburden you so soon after-"

            "What did I say about coddling?" Levi snapped. "l'll do it."

            "It's not like you to agree to an offer without hearing it."

            "Not like you to take no for an answer."

            Levi's phone vibrated. He scanned the message and said, "I'm late. Recruits shitting themselves. If there's nothing else-"

            "Go. I won't keep you."

            "Спасибо," he added as Levi crossed the threshold. Levi stopped. He turned and opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked away and muttered "Fix your shitty arm," in goodbye.   

            Erwin leaned back when the door shut. He rested his eyes.

            A shadow runs, flies, rides at his side. But Erwin knew. He knew, as if the dreams offered footnotes, as if they whispered it in his ear as the form flitted in and out, there and then not, as walls rose and crumbled (Mila? Mary? Maria?). He knew it was Levi.

            In his waking hours, Erwin watched him, and Levi allowed it. He accompanied Erwin at the conclusion of his own duties, and Erwin allowed it. Erwin began to anticipate his presence, but never demand it. Yet Levi came. He came to briefings and meetings and the odd morning stroll. Sometimes he spoke, often not. Levi watched him too. Erwin should have felt claustrophobic. He should have felt unnerved, as some of his associates did by proxy when he insisted that Levi join this or that function for his insight, but increasingly, simply for his company. He should have objected and put a definitive end to whatever it was that closed the distance between them before it gained such momentum that he wouldn't be able to tell the beginning from the end.  

            A pair of eyes, then a face, then a body gave his silent poltergeist form. In a week's time, it became him in the tilt of his head. The lines on his brow. The fine hairs at his nape.

            For all that Levi studied him, Erwin was no different. He became possessed with a desire to feel every notch and scratch on the blade. To sharpen it.

            It was a professional curiosity.

 

*

 

            They were too vivid to be normal dreams. That's all Levi assumed they were, before. He didn't buy into the Freudian business, didn't care. He never had the time. But the visions had time for him.

            He woke each morning as if emerging from a still lake, as if he had been submerged hours too long. His lungs burned. His breath rattled in his throat. He woke as if he was bursting out of his own skin.

            One night's chase was elegant, as if choreographed. Another, improvised, chaotic, all bruises and scraped knees. He dodged arterial sprays in one. He cut breaks and spilled poisons in a second, and a third. He moved as if algorithms puppeteered each muscle fiber, each cell. He moved and stalked and chased with a single purpose.

            His arms trembled over the sink as he forced air into his lungs. It was a small mercy that the dormitory's communal washroom was deserted at such an hour, that he could allow the last vestiges of the nightly terrors to ripple out of his body undisturbed. If no one knew, he may yet deny them. If only he knew, he might still will them away. The Halcion wasn't working.

            He had never killed but with a gun in his waking hours, never but in defense, and never engaged the same person twice. Each dream offered him a more intimate weapon until he watched himself kill with his hands alone. It was never in defense.  His target was always one. Coifed gold. Full lips.

 

*

 

            Hange missed one meeting. Then two. Then messages went unanswered, calls unreturned. While Hange had fallen victim to their own work before, and Moblit apologized in his usual profuse way, Erwin scheduled a visit anyway.

            Hange's labs were rented out of a large downtown university. Erwin entered one lab, then another, meeting silence and an uncharacteristic absence of stomach-churning odors. Lab rosters reported dwindling activity, and no lab presence by anyone but the janitor in two days. As Erwin doubled back into the hallway, faint metallic clicks met his ear. He looked up as a red-faced Isabel rounded the corner, waved wildly and made a run for him.

            "Please," Erwin pleaded, holding up his hands as if that would slow her down, "careful on the-"

            "Erwin!! No, look, it's totally fine!" she said, and to Erwin's horror, hopped on her prosthetic, itself bright red and peppered with brilliantly painted petals by what Erwin suspected was Moblit's hand. Isabel had recovered far sooner than Farlan, having been spared a head injury, but she was short one left leg below the knee. The gentle clicks of the charms she pinned to decorate her new one reminded Erwin of a kitten's bell.

            Erwin looked away and shut his eyes when Isabel hopped into his view. His poorly suppressed grin betrayed him at her infectious laugh.

            "Come on!" she said, red hair bouncing after her, "Hange's in their office and Moblit's runnin' for parts, come, come!" And she was off. Erwin followed.

            It was a palace of crumpled paper and industrial parts. The walls, floor and even swaths of ceiling were wallpapered with dozens of unintelligible diagrams. A machine, he figured as he traced the lines on the closest diagram pinned over a dozen others on the back of the door. The room reeked of iron. Erwin mapped a route through the precariously leaning towers of spare parts and discarded sketches as Isabel chirped a goodbye and left.  After a brief search in the little jungle, Erwin found its epicenter - a figure bent over a desk, scribbling furiously, pencil shredded to a nub.

            "Hange."

            Nothing.

            Erwin called them again, louder. Nothing. He put a hand on Hange's shoulder. A mumbled "Jes' a sec" greeted him. His hand drifted to their back, kneading with the heel of his palm where he knew it always coiled into knots. Hange's arm slowed. Erwin doubled the effort with his other hand and Hange fell slack as if by a switch.

            "No fair," they mumbled, words drifting in and out of a relieved groan.

            "You've been ignoring me."

            "'M s-sorry, I'm-" Hange's head listed. Erwin turned their chair a fraction and knelt beside them.

            "Talk to me."

            "Mm..." they hummed, bloodshot eyes drifting shut.

            "Talk to me, Hange." Erwin repeated gently.

            Hange smiled. Their brows quirked, and suddenly the look was far more melancholy. Erwin rose and plucked a ribbon from a flower arrangement on Hange's desk - Isabel's addition, he assumed - carded his hands through their hair, and tied it back loosely, letting a few strands fall forward the way they liked. 

            They shared self-destruction. They spoke the language. Their dialects may differ, but they knew its cadence, its temptation. They knew when to leave, when to stay.

            Erwin glanced at the books Hange had strewn within arm's reach. Rheology. Data Transmission. Neurotechnology.  Cognitive Therapy. Even a collection of Apollinaire. Either Hange was extraordinarily scattered or moments from epiphany. He eyed the chapter title in the margin of an opened text. Continual-activation theory.

            Hange groaned. "Moblit's- he's got the teams workin' overtime-"

            "The labs are empty."

            "I know," Hange said, stretching the o. Their eyelids fluttered open and shut. "Field work. Sample collection. Comparison-com-comparative-" Hange groaned. "The prelim report's on your desk, Erwin."

            "I know."

            Hange frowned. "Why're you here, then? 'M workin'."

            "You haven't been sleeping," Erwin said. At that, a sudden tension seized Hange, and they scowled, rubbing their neck as if they'd just suffered a crick. Erwin didn't buy the ruse. A sliver of fear had crossed their face. He thought of his own vivid nights, but tucked the thought away. He wasn't about to complicate matters with his own petty oddities.

            "I need you at a hundred percent for our next campaign."

            Hange frowned. "So soon? We gotta situation or-"

            "No. A media campaign."

            Hange blinked, then grinned sloppily with a knowing wink. "'Bout time we put you on the screen again."

            "I won't be debating this time. This will be different from anything we've done before. Larger. Riskier." At Hange's dazed frown, Erwin took their hands in his and said, "Stop in soon. We'll need you."

            An extended crash and a litany of worried noises announced Moblit's entrance. Erwin stood and straightened his jacket, but the flowers caught his eye again. They were stranger up close. Orchids, maybe, with bizarrely coiled crimson petals. He was sure he'd never seen the kind before.

            "How is she?" he asked, nodding at them. Hange looked from him to the arrangement, bemusement blossoming on their face. "Isabel," Erwin clarified.

            Hange grinned. "She's a monster. I don't know where she's finding all the parts I need, but she gets 'em. Can teach me a few things. Refuses to get back on the bike without Farlan so I'm keeping her in the bio labs. On the job training and all.  Though...." they started, smirking and playing with a twisted red petal, "these aren't from her."

            Hange folded a napkin across their front and contorted their face into the most criminally accurate imitation of Levi's scowl Erwin had seen yet. "Said he'll tie me to a park bench while he "burned this garbage" if he sees it again," Hange said and laughed. "What a sweetheart." 

            They sobered a fraction as Moblit at last freed himself from Hange's maze. "I'll be there," Hange said, "Just..." Erwin nodded. Hange didn't need to say.

            Erwin began making his way out of the clutter. Questions plagued him, but he wouldn't dare voice them yet. Hange was a peerless scholar and a walking, breathing tome of an obscene amount of knowledge and critical insight, but they became ambition made corporeal at the slightest resistance, the barest opposition. They thrived in the Survey Corps only when Erwin learned whether to stoke a flame, or contain an inferno.

            On his way out, a familiar name leadened his feet. It was scribbled on a crooked scrap jutting out from a pile of aborted drafts. He smoothed the crinkled corner.

_risa??? ro ri ross rosi rosa ROSE **DOME ROSE**_

            The last two words had been underlined so fiercely that the pencil had burst through the page. Below that was:

_Dome Maria Dome Rose Dome ????_

            The names lit like beacons, but he didn't know why. An itch settled in the back of his mind, a certainty that if he could only rummage through a few dozen cluttered memories, he might understand. As it was, he could do nothing. Erwin made a note of them and left.

 

            Snow whistled through the barren village. Scouts spread out and hunted for tracks.

            The residents might have been gone a month, maybe two. A lone hermit with tawny hair and leathery hands had holed himself up in a well-stocked basement, but offered little but irritated grunts at their inquiries. Several homes bore the smashed windows and winding scratch marks that betrayed the presence of titans. The Survey Corps searched the village before settling in and waiting for word.

            Hange huddled so close to the inn parlor's fireplace that a flame licked at their hair. Moblit made a distraught noise and pulled them back as Erwin received the first wave of scouts.

            "No tracks, but we crossed the river and made sure Churchill's deputy mayor deployed their own search teams. They're keeping the whole thing hushed up, sir," said the scout leader. She ruffled her hood to dislodge ice and snow. Mike dismissed his perimeter unit and listened in.

            "Tourist economy, Williams, they wouldn't dare make this public. Rest up, then relieve the bike maintenance teams," Erwin ordered. Williams offered a "Yes, sir" and departed with her squad. Hange groaned from beneath three coats and as many scarves.

            "Doesn't M-Manitoba have their own l-local division? W-why are we h-here?"

            "It's too understaffed for the threat we anticipate," Erwin said. He slipped out a local map to modify scouting routes and rubbed his numbing hands between strokes. An entire village, gone. It was unprecedented.

            "Officer Zoe," Moblit said softly, "They're taking care of the situation in Winnipeg."

            Hange's eyes flew open. "Winnipeg? Winni's no backwater, it's huge, Erwin. If they see a titan, if they ..."

            Erwin nodded grimly. "They will."

            "What then? Why aren't we there? What will we do?"

            "Wait."

            Hange threw up their hands and yelled, "We can't wait!"

            "Why not?" A voice cut in. They turned as a vicious gale blew Levi over the threshold. He slammed the door and shucked off his coat.

            "Because," Hange said and stood, "we're going to be-" they stopped, looked to Erwin questioningly, and at his nod, went on, dropping to a whisper, "Huge chunks of our federal funding are slashed every time an eyewitness pipes up or a recording gets out," they said, pulling Levi toward the fire, "We're paid as much for keeping folks quiet as for - hey." Hange stopped, stared at Levi open-mouthed for a moment, and brought their palms to his face. He scowled as Hange laughed, pulled him into an unforgiving embrace and spun him nearly off his feet.

            "He's so warm!" Hange cried as Levi tore himself away and backed into Mike's table.

            "'Course he is," said Mike, inhaling deeply, "He's runnin' a hundred, at least."

            Erwin looked up sharply. "You were out there with a fever?"

            The room went cold. Colder, that is. Hange and Mike froze. Again, more so than before. Moblit busied himself with a map. Winds rattled the door in its frame in the silence, and the windows in theirs.

            "You some telepathic thermometer?" Levi snapped at Mike as he strode past and pointedly ignored the question. Hange crept up from behind and brought the back of their hand to his forehead. Levi swatted it away, but not quickly enough. The sluggish reflex wasn't lost on Erwin. Neither was the sweat on his brow or the pronounced rise and fall of his chest. Hange winced and flapped their hand theatrically.

            "You're off the op. Third floor. Room 3H," Erwin said.

            "It's not-"

            "That's an order."

            Levi stared, unmoving. Erwin returned it in full.

            Hange clapped sharply and said, "Let me show you up!" before leaping up the steps two at a time.

            "Whatever," he drawled, and followed Hange.

            When they were alone, Mike leaned over and said, "He's taking something."

            "What?"              

            "I know, I know, but I wouldn't have recognized it if- if I, uh-"

            "Oh?"

            Mike shrugged. "I should be commended for digging my own hole to get Levi out of his," he teased, and blew hotly into his numbing hands. "It's triazolam. Halcion tablets, most likely. That's either withdrawal or I'm the pope."

            "The sleep aid?"

            "That's the one," Mike said. He stood and turned to leave. Mike's olfaction was extraordinary, but not supernatural. He couldn't have recognized it if he hadn't smelled it before, and recently.

            "You're a little eager to go," Erwin said.

            Hange wasn't sleeping. Now, Levi. Potentially, Mike. Erwin courted a lance of repentant guilt. He wasn't paying attention. He was working his best officers into the ground.

            "The second scout unit'll be back soon. I won't keep you," Mike said dismissively, and whipped a scarf around his neck, then over his nose and mouth.

            "Mike-"

            "Later, Erwin," he said. He threw on his coat. He hesitated at the door.

            "I need my head in the operation," he said quietly. "We can talk about some silly dreams when all this is over." He left. Mike hadn't turned back to Erwin, hadn't seen his eyes widen at his words.

            The second scout unit arrived not a minute later. Their report put a forcible end to Erwin's feverish thoughts. He pulled on his wool coat with leaden arms and secured his helmet with fingers numbed by more than an arctic front. The trail was fresh. The chase, short. Two of five squads were slaughtered in their entirety. Nothing shone like red on soft, delicate white.

            Mike hauled wounded riders over both shoulders back and forth through the punishing snowfall into one of several homes converted into medical bays. He melted into the swirling white at three strides. Hange stumbled off their bike and tore into the inn to recompile measurements. They had sworn their first estimate had been a mistake. They wanted it to be. Erwin wanted it to be.

                Waiting for Hange's recalculation was a formality. He knew. It was no mistake.

               

*

 

                 He swung the door open, and his switchblade with it.

                Levi woke gasping wildly, as if no air remained in the world.

                "Shit," he said, a delirious grin warping his face as the ceiling swam and the earth howled. His hair lay plastered to his damp forehead. His skin itched. His hands shook. "Shit. shit..." He curled his hand and jumped when nails met his palm. He had just held something, he was sure of it. "Shit. Not now," he hissed through gritted teeth, listening to his shuddering heart between breaths that cracked his lips and scratched his throat.

                He felt disgusting. Caked with grime. His flesh marinated in filth. He scraped his nails over his throat, his chest, willing the skin to strip away so that he might bleach his bones and scrub at his nerves. Sweat stung the wild red marks. He hissed at the burn. He had moved his own hands, marked his own skin. He had control.

                But his eyelids fell, and he didn't anymore.

                The windows stretched from floor to ceiling. His mark faced it, baring his broad, suited back and thick, bare neck to his unannounced visitor, hands clasped behind him. Four had started like this before, Levi noted. Two ended with a bullet. One in a blade. A hundred story fall in the last. Levi felt his feet move, felt the blade flick open and shut. Open and shut. The office was otherworldly. It was palatial in size yet Spartan in furnishing. It was dark but inviting. Cold, but intimate. Open and shut.

                Something was different. Levi watched himself draw closer, heard his footfalls growing louder. He watched the city's evening lights play on the man's jaw, saw them ripple over the curve of his hair that had been immaculately slicked back, as if carved. This had ended before with a trigger, a press, a push. Yet he felt this body - his own, and yet not - unburden, as if throwing off a suffocating mask, a burdensome costume. His limbs swung easily and his head hadn't turned wildly to map the contours of the room as it did in every other night but this one.

                Some things always stayed the same. Whoever bid his eyes to dart this way or that shot to the man's right arm again. The cuff, pinned with a white stone wing, obscured all but the hand. Sleek, white titanium and hair-width wires were married into a limb as faithful and functional as its lost predecessor. It bore no fanciful carvings, no excessive dips or curves. It was efficient. Elegant.

                Levi stood alongside him now. He flicked the switchblade shut, and extended it. His mark took it in both hands and studied it in the errant light.

                "Beautiful," he said softly, and only then did Levi see it too, the baroque leaves and spirals winding around the handle, but only briefly. He looked at the man instead, as if his voice, a low rumble that eased under his skin, had given him permission.

                It was always this face. It was always this Erwin Smith.

                But this performance was foreign to Levi, and its performers, off-script. It had never been so languid, so playful. It was a trigger, a slash, a push. It was not this odd waltz.

                "Rose's?" the mark asked.

                "Yeah," Levi heard himself answer. "Good money, too."

                "Sina had good money."

                "Someone convinced me otherwise."

                The target finally looked at him. A soft smile upset the hard planes of his cheekbones. His eyes drifted over his face, his neck, his body. Shivers followed in their wake.

                "Can he do it again?" He asked as he offered Levi the blade. Levi watched himself take it and flick it aside. It clattered to the floor. He caught his target's hand before it descended, curled his fingers into his and brought cold, titanium knuckles to his lips.

 

*

 

                 Erwin neared the room and raised his fist to knock, but was interrupted when the same door opened sharply  from within. Mike slipped out, muttered an "All yours," with an uncharacteristic scowl, and left. Erwin blinked, checked the room number again and entered.

                The room had been swept and mopped and dusted until more surfaces shined than Erwin thought strictly necessary. Levi had his back to him, tying his cravat into place with sharp, irate jerks. It had twisted the back of his collar.

                "Wait," said Erwin as Levi reached for his jacket, folded neatly on the back of a chair. Erwin stepped in and adjusted his collar. He winced sympathetically as Levi tensed at the brush of cold fingers. His hands lingered near Levi's nape, fingers twitching with an inexplicable desire to trail through the sheared hair.

                 "You need a haircut."

                Levi tsked and swatted his hands away. "This some good cop, bad cop shit?" he said as he pulled on his jacket. He glanced at Erwin as he did so and did a double take, eyes darting to Erwin's hair and widening a fraction.

                "Glass houses," he sneered.

                "What does that mean?"

                "Means fix your hair," he muttered, and threw a scarf over the cravat. Erwin felt his hair and found that he must have run an idle hand through it in the snow and slicked it back.

                "How many?" Levi asked as Erwin parted it.

                "One."

                "How many titans, I mean."

                "One."

                Levi turned, hands frozen in place where he had been adjusting the lapels of his jacket.

                "Hange confirmed its dimensions," Erwin said, pausing to take a heavy breath. "Our growth rate prediction is...it'll need readjustment."

                "Spit it out."

                "Thirteen feet."

                Levi scowled. "Outlier."

                "Four years ago, eleven feet was an outlier. Before that, ten, nine, eight."

                "I assume your government friends will sit on this too."

                "If our campaign is successful, they wouldn't dare."

                "When," Levi corrected idly. He took a seat to lace his boots.

                Erwin watched him, a smile on his lips, in his eyes. Levi looked up and frowned.  

                "What?" he snapped.

                "Your faith is more encouraging than you know," Erwin admitted. Levi's hands stilled. His shoulders slumped. Erwin might have blamed the withdrawal, but Levi stood, crossed his arms, and regarded him severely.            

                "I made a mistake," he said, though with all the vehemence of an accusation, so it took Erwin a moment to separate the meaning from the bite.

                "I self-medicated," Levi said, "and crippled an operation. If I hadn't-"

                "Stop," Erwin said. "We don't deal in could haves. You understand your misstep."

                "Yes."

                "You will not make it again."

                "No."

                Erwin stepped forward and gripped his shoulders. The snow-packed window glanced on his eyes and melted the grey into a blinding silver.

                "I won't ask why. I only insist that you trust us to see all that you have invested in the Survey Corps and allow us to return the favor."

                Trust us, he wanted to say. Trust me.

                A beat. "I will."

                For all his curtness, he was no less sincere.

                "Good," Erwin said. He made to move away when Levi's hand shot out, grabbed his wrist and held his right arm. He followed his troubled eyes to an errant bloodstain on his hand - he had carried the wounded with Mike, though evidently hadn't cleaned himself as well as he thought.

            He swallowed his excuses as Levi disappeared into the washroom and returned with a damp towel. Erwin watched him take his wrist and scrub at the offending stain, lips faintly parted as the cloth swept over his knuckles.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> свинья - pig  
> kah-peh-tan (капитан) - captain.  
> Баран - Ram/Sheep (common pejorative)  
> Спасибо - Thank you.


	5. Deputy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [Parov Stelar - The Fog](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpLWfHSjVsY&feature=youtu.be)  
> ♫ [Morricone - Death Rattle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL-X53ze5O0&feature=youtu.be)  
> 

__

 

 

            Winds whistled over the open plains. The deputy planted his hand on his hat at the first flutter of the brim. He inhaled deeply and rode past an abandoned encampment that drew sighs and gasps from the riders behind him, and onto a rocky outcrop. Past the stench. Past the blood.  

            A ruddy stallion clipped up the rocks after him. He didn't need to turn to know its rider.

            "Makin' eyes at mountains?" he heard behind him.

            The deputy shrugged as the sheriff's horse clipped to a stop beside him. The stallion thrust his nose into the deputy's chest, then troubled his mare's ear. "Nothin' I ain't seen before down there. That, though," the deputy said, nodding at the distant range, cliff faces aflame as royal blues and purples swaddled its valleys and far sides away from the setting sun, "That's a kinder sight."

            The deputy's eyes moved from the boiling Rockies to the sheriff himself. They moved to his faraway look, to golden hair.

            Mike let the dreams carry him to the Colorado plains, the Mojave, the Rockies. They turned his head and moved his limbs, and submerged him in images so visceral that only the lingering sensation of being in the back of someone else's head convinced him that he wasn't himself kicking up hot clouds of dust with his galloping mare, beating the expedition's naturalists at cards while enduring the medley of bizarre odors in their tents or plotting titan movements with the sheriff on unforgiving nights with half a ragged pelt and an oil lamp between them.

 

*

 

            Seeing Erwin, this other Erwin - this man who was sharper and rougher and wilder - should have startled him. They were too alike, and too different. His nose and brow and jaw were too hardened by the sun, his hands too littered with the fading marks of dull blades and primitive bullets. The earth's rich, heady odor clung to him like a second skin. Yet when Mike woke with the usual strangled gasp and saw him once more in his waking hours, he didn't perceive a second Erwin, or a first. He wore different scars and carved another kind of frontier, but his commander, his friend, was never any man but himself, whether Mike's own eyes were open or shut.

 

*

 

            He dreamt of Nanaba. She wrangled a titan one early morning. Never a wasted motion. No hesitation. Every breath and crack of the reigns was in the service of ridding this world, both worlds, every world, of the beasts.

            The naturalists balked at the titan as they restrained the howling creature. The wild-haired thing looked like any of them save for skin tougher than bull's hide and a body temperature that could boil their suppers. The gaping mouth and vacant eyes were branded into his mind.

            These visions of the American frontier represented a world as it was centuries before the first recorded titan sighting. It didn't worry Mike. A dream was all it was.

 

*

 

                The Rangers had called him Sheriff cheekily, once or twice. He was no Sheriff in the usual sense, not at all like the men who lorded over the little towns like huddled doll houses caked in dust and clay and left out in the sun to bake and peel. No, their Sheriff didn't settle down. Some thought he couldn't. But the name stuck.

                So did his own. So did deputy.

 

*

               

                 A grunt. A yawn. One of the thieves on the horse behind the deputy's shifted to peer past her sleeping partner and into the plains beyond. She groaned and fidgeted in her binds. Her red hair had grown dusty and unkempt from run-ins with the odd dust devil, but her eyes remained sharpened, alert. She whistled to her captor.

                "Ya'll the Recons, yeah?"

                "Yep."

                "Heard ya bastards shoot on sight."

                "'M sure you did."

                "Well, do ya?"

                "Depends," said the deputy, glancing back at the second horse, "You a titan?"

                "Depends," she said darkly, "Feelin' a lil' feverish, deputy." When that didn't win a reply, she added, "Heard you eat snakes."

                "That's a new one."

                "Heard you collect eyes and ears. Heard you bait titans by rattlin' bones an-"

                The deputy laughed. "You're either a poetic son of a bitch or a straight sadist, friend. Prayin' we find some Keats on you when we hit base."

                It was a longer ride than necessary, but the deputy looked back at the two thieves so often that Mike assumed that whatever had happened prior to the dream might have rattled them all. Prior. That, too, didn't worry Mike.

            He never figured them to have endings or beginnings, but the ones he'd been entertaining all winter were clearly related. Not chronologically, he thought - he grounded a Titan in one and pledged his heart to the Recon Rangers in the next - but otherwise so demanding of his attention that in a month's time, he dreamt of nothing else.

 

*

 

                "Mike," Erwin started carefully, "How?"

                "Dumb luck, hell if I kn-"

                "No - how did you know? They must have been hundreds of meters away."

                Mike rubbed his neck and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The adrenaline hadn't abated. He was panting.

                Something strange passed over Erwin's face. His eyes darted to Mike's chest, his shoulders. "It's alright," said Erwin, clapping a hand on his shoulder, "Later."

 

                Mike thought of little else for weeks. Not waiting to even discard his filthy riding gear, he barreled into his office when they returned to HQ and drew up a map of the town before cross referencing its landmarks to approximate his position with that of Farlan and Isabel.

                Four hundred meters.

                He urged his mind back through the haze of sensations and rapid-fire orders.

                He had caught the faintest wisp of tulips. Had sensed the scuffed leather of Farlan's beaten jacket.  Had shamed bloodhounds with the ease with which he'd tracked them. Mike slumped over his desk, one hand supporting his weary head. The other prodded at his nose, as if to rouse it so that it might explain itself.

                His finger stilled at the bridge. He had never learned the thieves' names. The dream had ended too soon.

                But he could guess.

 

*

 

                There were occasional oddities. Dreams within dreams. Men on wires. Giants in the fog. Towers of glass and metal. Machines. Domes. Every time he rode to greet them, the wind whisked them away.

                One night in late December as another apparition wavered from his sight, he was struck with the realization that he himself, and not the deputy whose eyes he was borrowing, had turned his head. Mike had gripped the reins. Mike had felt wind lash at his sun beaten face.

                Or the deputy had seen the apparitions too.

                The shock of it forced him awake so abruptly that Nanaba flew to her feet, swiped a hand under the mattress and whipped out a pistol. Mike sat up. He squeezed his eyes shut to stem the rising nausea as Nanaba came back to bed and held his face in her hands.

                "Open up," she said. Mike opened his eyes and squinted as a pin light flashed on. "Follow it, come on, ain't the first time," she said. Mike obliged.

                The late evening bathed them in blue. He felt weightless for a moment, as if waves crashed overhead. As if currents curled over his limbs.

                "You're seeing a doctor."

                "Nan-"

                Nanaba felt his pulse and laid a cool hand on his forehead.

                "Whatever the hell this is, it's not going away," she said. "Either you hit your head or you saw something fucked up that's been gnawin' at you since - and you're not trying that Halcion shit again."

                Mike gingerly lay back down. Nanaba peered down at him with a familiar frown.

                "You can't keep pretending this'll go away on its own. You know Erwin's gonna need you for that project of his-"

                His eyes shot open. "He told you?"

                Nanaba smirked. "Didn't have to. Think Smith picked some dense asshole to manage half the Corps?"

                Mike shook his head and said gravely, "Only a very clever and perceptive asshole." Nanaba punched him and settled into the crook of his arm as he rubbed his shoulder. She draped an arm over his chest, fingers trailing over his still-hurried pulse.

                "I don't care that you don't tell me," she said. "God knows I don't tell you half the shit I've seen rads pull, never mind the actual titans." Mike turned and pressed his lips to her forehead.

                She tucked herself into his side and mumbled, "Not carryin' you to safety if you pass out on your bike, asshole. Too fuckin' big-"       

                Mike drew her closer. He traced her scarred back with calloused fingers until her breathing deepened. He traced a history written with claws and teeth.

 

 

*

 

                January, 2091.

 

                Five titans in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Deceased. Three in Salisbury University basement complex. Deceased. Nine roaming the shores of Lake Ontario. Deceased.

                Red flares, northwest.

                Pro-titan radical led titan incursion seven miles southwest of Oklahoma City. Thirty two titans. Deceased. Three captured radicals. Radicals in Intermipol custody. Witnesses in Intermipol custody.

                Caravans hurtle forward. Bones line lonely riverbanks.  

                Three titans in San Antonio suburbs. Deceased. Witnesses in Intermipol custody.

                Wings ripple on the backs of horses. Anchors rust in rotting bark.

               

 

                February, 2091.

 

                Level three incursion in Trinidad's Port of Spain. Forty-three casualties. 340 hospitalized. Witnesses permanently institutionalized in Intermipol Reintegration Center. Port Authority of Trinidad and Tobago placed under indefinite Intermipol jurisdiction. Indeterminate titan count. Indeterminate pro-titan radical count. Covert Intermipol records probe in progress.

                Radical sightings at Mexico City International Airport terminals prompt joint investigation by cooperating Survey Corps and Intermipol personnel. Situation resolved. All evidence confiscated by Intermipol. Probe in progress.

                The Survey Corps's leadership division crossed hemispheres, oceans, borders. They temporarily  relieved local divisions and operated in their place, shutting down local attacks and pro-titan radical incursions, as well as receiving reports and granting besieged divisions an opportunity to regroup and resupply. The Survey Corps' top brass performed this triennial division survey to ensure that all stations receive adequate support and personnel.

 

 

                March, 2091.

                                                               

                "AF8. BF4. C34. D70."

                A confirmed the order. The console blinks. B confirmed. Blink. C. D. Blink. Blink.

                Three squads roared through the countryside from opposite ends.

                Erwin's earpiece crackled with Mike's report. "Bait converging. 40 meters."

                "Approaching intersection. Hook at standby," Erwin answered, watching squad D's lone member flit in and out of dense evergreens on the other side of a clearing on a path parallel to his own. 

                "Copy," said Mike.

                Three squads led six thrashing titans into a clearing.

                Squad A curved past B's titans. C split with ground churning turns. Two riders sped north, two south. Erwin circled the convergence, the meeting chaotic if not for the weeks of choreographing the formation to the second to ensure that every rider emerged unscathed. Erwin stopped at a healthy distance, watching, waiting.

                The titans hurtled into one another blindly. Squeals and howls pierced through their comm channels. Unnatural bodies churned the earth.

                "Six targets. Over," Erwin relayed to D.

                "Copy," D drawled.

                Erwin removed his helmet . A secondary console blinked. Snipers were in position. He had once tried an external display to let him line up his targets, but even top of the line devices were too slow, too unreliable. He trained his own eyes to see, and his heart to slow so that he may count between beats. His chest swelled with drawn breath.

                "Fire."

                The air in his lungs shuddered at the pops. Armor piercing rounds left the chambers of nine anti-materiel rifles and ripped through titan hearts and necks and skulls. Heads split open like overripe melons. The others dropped to the earth at the force of it as the headless titans spewed blood and steam, their flesh warping and weaving into second bulbous heads as they stumbled to their bloodied,  misshapen feet.

                They were not killing shots. They couldn't be. They only needed to draw their bulging eyes. Just until the rising rumble beyond the trees became a roar.

                Erwin barely saw him in the blur of blistering blood and black titanium. But Levi was there.

                He was a lax wire snapped taut. He was flattened grass and motor roar. Streams of curdling blood and steam. He was sliced napes and tire tracks. He was the cry of a startled crow.

                He was bike and blade and blood.

 

            That afternoon, Hange found Erwin in a room on the top floor of the Johannesburg division's regional barracks as their agents took inventory in preparation for trip to the next division HQ. They wandered over to the window and watched Levi below.

                "What is that, the second time?" Hange said, grinning down at Levi as he scrubbed hard between the grooves of his bike's suspension.

                "Third," Erwin said as he logged reports on his console.

                Hange crossed their arms and said, "Thought you told him to go easy on the fancy moves."

                Erwin skimmed through the footage caught by the cameras mounted on Levi's bike and helmet. "I'm only the messenger," Erwin said.

                Hange scoffed. "Coulda' sworn you were fundraiser, executive producer, director, editor..."

                "I'm only that, too."

                Hange laughed.

                "That's nothing," Erwin muttered, "But what I'm asking you all to do..."

                Hange frowned. "Stop. How long did you think Mike and I wouldn't figure out why you ordered tinted helmets? Why you made everyone cover their faces?"

                "We won't risk showing anyone's face but mine."

                Hange laughed dryly. "Didn't take you for a screen hog."

                "You know that's not wh-"

                "Take it easy," Hange said, and leaned on the window frame. "It's been three months. Isn't that enough?"

                "No. Not even with archival footage. We need the shots to show all kinds of towns and cities. We need to show," said Erwin as the operatives began to load the bikes into transport vans, "that titans can show up as much from the center of a metropolis to the outskirts of the most remote village. From Death Valley to Siberia. We won't succeed with one country or two or ten-"

               "What's next, world peace?"

                Erwin's mouth twitched. Slight though it was, Hange caught it and groaned. They came to him and pushed their head against his chest in a pantomime of knocking their head against a wall.

                Erwin watched Levi scrub his bike down for the fourth time.

 

 

                December, 2090.

 

                "Open books. 24/7 broadcast. For years, our agents have been infiltrating network studios, ISPs, labor organizations and local, state and federal governments to ensure that  our message won't be stopped, cut, warped or shut down. Our sleepers are operating as journalists, council presidents and studio executives. You will need to manage their progress. Confirm that their movements are on schedule. In the meantime, we will begin gathering footage during the upcoming year's division survey. The timing couldn't be better. Intermipol won't suspect a thing."

                Mike whistled, the sound echoing in the reinforced conference room. "Long time comin',"

                "So what's the message?" Hange asked.  

                "Simple. The titans are real. Pro-titan radicals are real. We will air footage of titan captures and release all but Corps-confidential titan and pro-titan radical intel to the public, as well as a comprehensive record of every titan incursion on record."

            "This thing gonna be international, then?" Mike asked.

            "Yes."

            "For how long?"

            "Until the people call for an international amendment to the Survey Corps charter."

            "What do you have in mind?"

            "To untangle us from the jurisdiction of the CIA and the International Military Police. Receive citizen eyewitnesses without incarcerating them, institutionalizing them. We've lost too many to Intermipol reeducation centers. Prosecute radicals in earnest instead of slapping wrists. Give the titans the attention they deserve."

            "This won't just rile the big dogs.," Mike said. "The radicals won't sit tight either. Titan incursion rates will become-"

            "Unprecedented," Erwin said quietly.

            Erwin felt eyes on him. They were attentive before, but now they burned.

            "Intermipol won't let this air," Levi said. "They'll shut it down."

            "Our distribution network was designed to function independently upon deployment. No one will be able to stop it when I give the final order. Not Intermipol. Not me."

            "Then they will shut us down," Levi said, still more deliberately.

            "They will."

            "Then," Levi drawled, as Erwin felt the trap close over his neck, felt its rigid spines digging into his flesh, "who will stop the swarm when you kick the nest?"

            Erwin returned his gaze, unblinking. "No one."

            Hange bit a knuckle and laughed nervously. Mike leaned forward, brows drawn.

            "'Smoke them out'," Levi scoffed.

            "Then create a secret emergency reserve, keep it hushed up from Intermipol," Mike said, "something to stop the worst incursions while we petition 'em to let us-"

            "Went right over your head, huh?" Levi said, a vicious smile on his lips. "That would defeat the purpose. This has nothing to do with your precious humanity. With people." He explained to Mike, but his eyes hadn't left Erwin's.

            "And when Intermipol doesn't haul ass at public pressure - because you know they won't - because you know Intermipol, and you know the bastards will take their sweet fucking time," Levi went on, "what then? How many cities will it take? How many people? How much blood?"

            "Levi-" Mike started.

            "You would slaughter a thousand, a million, for a glorified power grab-"

            "Leave us, Mike. Hange," Erwin interrupted coolly. They stood, eyeing first Levi, then Erwin, before leaving. Erwin stood and secured the room. When he turned, Levi had hopped up on the table. He leaned back languidly. Erwin rounded the table and moved a chair to face him, amusement swelling in his chest at the thought of Levi trying to sneak off the razor's edge before he allowed it.

                Erwin shrugged off his jacket and folded it over his seat. He sat just out of reach of Levi's swaying legs, his own spread easily, one arm curved over the back of an adjacent chair, other hand spread on his thigh. He leaned back and tilted his head until he diffused their height difference with a level look, but not before dragging indulgent eyes over the curve of his calf, the twitching tension in his thighs, the powerful cords in his arms. By the time he reached his chest, its rhythmic rise and fall had slowed to halting, barely-there jerks.  

                Some agents responded to blows and shouts. Some, to doubled chores. Fewer rations. There was no Survey Corps without order. No order without discipline. No discipline without authority.

                Erwin took his time following the line of his slender neck. He watched it bob, the line upset by a hard swallow.

                Some responded to a certain kind of authority.

                "Sit," Erwin said.

                Levi opened his mouth and drew breath, but no sound came. Finally, he stood. He swung his chair to face him, legs scraping deliberately. He dropped into it and crossed his legs and arms.  

                "Continue," Erwin said.

                "Иди к черту."  _Go to hell._

                "Рано."  _Not yet._

                Levi's eyes widened a fraction, but the indifferent gaze returned so quickly that Erwin wondered if he had seen anything at all.

                He was mistaken. There was intent in his stare, a question in the tilt of his head. Levi's mouth parted to speak.

                "I would," Erwin said suddenly. Levi watched him.

                "I would slaughter a thousand. A million. I would use the most contemptible methods. I would trade places with the devil himself. If it would rid us of these creatures. Is that," Erwin said, a little breathless, "what you wanted to hear?"

                The thoughts burned like brands with each failed operation, each successful operation, each victory, each funeral. He'd never spoken them. He should have known they would steal more air from him than any other.

                "No," Levi said, eyes flickering to Erwin's chest, to the quickening breath at his parted mouth, "it's what you needed to say."

                 At that, Erwin understood. Levi's outburst was a ruse.

            "Don't misunderstand, командир. I know you're not in the business of power grabs. I said I will follow you."

 

            "But I won't," he added as he rose, "let you forget why you're there."

            From another's mouth, the words would have been insolent. A dischargeable offense. From another, there would not have been the same wary warmth, the same iron promise. Levi resisted his every attempt to craft him, mold him. He was more weapon than man on a bike, but more mouth than obedience otherwise. Erwin couldn't fill the notches. He couldn't whet the blade's edge. Not quickly. Not yet.

                Yet someone had begun to fill the space between his strides and the seconds between his breath. Someone crept beneath his sinew and sank into his veins. Someone made a farce of his most cunning, circuitous orders by satisfying them and more, and more, and more.

                "Thank you, Levi."

                And more.  

                Levi turned to leave, satisfaction curling his lip. A cursory thought appeared to stop him. He turned back. Fast. He landed a knee on the sliver of seat between Erwin's thighs. He seized his tie and yanked Erwin close, too close.

            Levi moved his other hand to Erwin's throat.  

            "But look at me like I'm a common whore again and I'll remind you of something else."

            He squeezed. Erwin inhaled the same hot, heavy breath that delivered the not-at-all idle threat, a promise laced with sharp mint and the lingering smoky scent of black tea.

                Erwin's mouth parted. His head spun. Words idled on his tongue.

                He was not impulsive. He did not move a piece without knowing its reverberative ripple ten, twenty moves from his own. Yet when he inched forward under the pretense of filling his lungs, surely, he thought, it was an accident that their noses might have brushed. Surely he could be forgiven one misstep, one reckless move.

                Levi tilted his head.

                But not two.

                "Dismissed," Erwin whispered. There was no need to speak much louder. He needn't discover how ruined his voice might have been.

               

_"And who commands me?"_

_"I command you."_

 

                The words echoed in Erwin's head well after he began to question who had said what.

                He was a lax wire snapped taut. He was flattened grass and motor roar. He was the sting of mint and a vapor's curl from cooling tea.

                He was an unprofessional curiosity.

 

*

 

                "Figure we can trust raiders?" the deputy asked.

                The campfire flames curled and crackled. Embers grasped for the stars.

                One of their assistant naturalists as tame as the frontier they patrolled had engrossed the pair of petty thieves by flipping through a sketchbook with such enthusiasm that the whole camp received a lesson on fauna native to high altitudes. Mike assumed from the warbling noises that erupted from the three that they had had moved on from scarlet gilia to kestrels.

                The sheriff finally lifted his eyes from their newest riders, stepped closer to the fire and said, "I'm more invested in gettin' 'em to trust us."

                "Get their boss to trust you and I'll find you his weight in gold." As an afterthought, he whispered conspiratorially, "On second thought, might not amount to all that much."

                The sheriff gave him a light shove, mouth held taut to stifle a grin.

                "Don't know where'd you find even half that," the sheriff said, "They probably squeezed the rivers dry by now."

                "Like hell I'd forget shovin' titans off the coast," the deputy said darkly. "And they went right for the peripheral towns too, the sons of bitches-"

                "Don't-"

                "No one warned 'em. Why bother? They had their gold. They had to have their gold. No one did a damn thi-"

                He was jostled by a powerful grip on his jacket. The sheriff faced him now, fists buried in his front as blue eyes burrowed into his. Yet his voice was as composed as before, even soothing.

                "Mike," he said, and for a moment, Mike was sure the shock of it would wake him.

                He had no control over the dreams, but Mike had been catching a familiar face through the deputy's stolen glances into warped empty bottles. He'd tossed the same dusty curtain of hair from his eyes. Sweet and rancid odors alike were as inviting or nauseating as they were in his waking hours.  

                But he was always "deputy." He was "blondie." He was "mountain man," or whatever affectionate name the Recon Rangers gave him. He was just fine with being this other man, this deputy. It was simpler to compartmentalize the dreams as idle oddities. Maybe he'll write about them someday, sell a book or two and argue with Western enthusiasts.

                Maybe he'll tell Nanaba. Maybe even Erwin.

                But he had never before heard his name, much less from Erwin's frontier double. It crippled the flimsy walls he erected to separate this reality from his own. It shook his forced indifference to this thing he could find no words to describe to himself, much less to another. It was just a dream. Every dream for the past five months was just a dream.

                Then the sheriff's rough hands moved  to his face with such familiarity that the world shuddered. Mike prepared for the switch. Waited for the return trip that robbed him of breath and squeezed him through what felt like some infinitesimal gate that separated this reality from his own.

                But he remained.

                 As his vision steadied and his hearing emerged from the fog of white noise, he caught a litany of "I know"'s flying from the sheriff's mouth, and his hands returned to his sides, dropping as quickly as they had risen.

                "I won't waste your time arguin' about," the sheriff said, eyes drawn to a frayed hem or loose button, "bein' young blood or bein' powerless or straight ignorant of the storm our superiors were brewin', but," and here he looked at him again, no trick of the light brave enough to muddy that same, arresting blue, "I won't have you dwellin' on something that was well out of your control. We're here now, Mike," he said, and his vision shuddered again at the name, "and we're gonna wrangle these things til' we can look back at all o' this like a bad dream-"

                Mike gasped awake. A sheen of sweat cooled on his boiling skin. He shook his head, hoping it would break the sensation of being underwater. He threw on a battered shirt and trousers and navigated the division's barracks as best he could in dim lighting and unfamiliar hallways.

                He stepped outside and shivered. His fingers fumbled with a lighter as he sat on the steps of the building, the stench of exhaust and bodies and metal from miles around souring the numbing calm pouring through him by the icy wind. The metal burned the pad of his thumb. He drowned a pained hiss in a long drag.

                Panic lanced through him as a sudden weight fell on his shoulders. He felt the coarse weave of a thick coat. His benefactor rounded forward and sat beside him, leaning on the steps above.

                "Forgot where we are?" Erwin asked, a smile in his voice.

                "Yeah," Mike said. Sleep had grated his voice into a sound he didn't recognize. He wondered how the deputy sounded when he woke.

                "Late March in Ankara's no warmer than the one back home."

                Mike grunted in answer. He felt eyes on him. He imagined the smoke filling his lungs to burst.

                "Since when?"  Erwin asked quietly.

                "Mm?"

                Erwin nodded to the smoke curling out of his nose.

                "Don't worry," Mike muttered, "Won't dull it for more than ten minutes."

                "Dull what?"

                Mike frowned. Irritation blossomed at his temples. "My nose. You'll have it back by the time we head out," he said dismissively. Erwin's brows drew down and he straightened, looking at once apologetic and offended. Mike watched him, stifling one mental whiplash after another as he mapped a missing scar on his hand, a paler cast to his skin, a deeper blue in his eyes.

            He swore inwardly. He shouldn't have left his room so soon after he woke. He shouldn't have made so much noise coming down. He shouldn't have kept this to himself for so long.

                "Mike," Erwin said, and Mike shut his eyes against the conflicting memories. He opened them and smelled the same bitter smoke, heard the same street sweepers rumbling through the breaking dawn, saw the same towers and spires that pierced the city's skyline. No plains. No dust.

                "Mike, have I," Erwin started, then laid a hand on his knee and gripped firmly, deliberately, until Mike met his eye, "have I been giving you the impression that we, that I, only need you for that? As some kind of titan radar? Is that-"

                Mike laughed. He laughed because it was all so absurd. Erwin was absurd. The dreams were absurd. He laughed hard and long and when he couldn't catch his breath, he inhaled too quickly and coughed, eyes stinging in the lingering smoke.

                "No," Mike said, grinning crookedly at Erwin's thoroughly bemused face. "No."

                "It's overbearing sometimes," Mike went on, rubbing his nose, "the headaches. Need to turn it off, turn off from- from all the..." He trailed off.

                "I can't imagine," Erwin said sympathetically, moving his hand to Mike's shoulder. The weight was solid, familiar. They sat in silence for a time. The hand grounded him. He was sitting on the steps of the Survey Corps Ankara division building. He was with his commander, his friend.  He was home.

                Mike cleared his throat and fought off the phantom smells of dusty plains and smoke-laced leather. "There was a woman in Brussels, a tourist, maybe. Had the same..." He frowned. "'Smell' sounds too vulgar. Too... incomplete. It's more of an aura or ambiance or something. More than just one smell plus another, you know? It's a whole....a whole thing, a signature. Anyway, I sensed something similar on the Budapest division's chief. Didn't think anything of it. Then we catch the vactrain to Minsk, and what do you know? The Polish schoolteacher on the station, papers flyin' everywhere, remember?  Same air, aura, whatever. I couldn't believe it. I had to ask." He paused for effect.

             "Sisters! The two had visited the one in Brussels a week before."

                "Incredible," Erwin said with no little awe, then in a teasing lilt, "Don't tell me that's how you've been plotting our course."

                "Who knows?" Mike said slyly.

                Erwin grinned, but the smile was upset by a knowing look. A squint in the eyes, a firmness in the jaw. "There's another logic to them," Erwin said. "Your routes."       

                There were far more regional divisions than the top brass can reasonably access without impinging their own operations. It was necessary to prioritize certain regions over others. Ordinarily, the route is a balancing act between geopolitical conditions and security.

                Mike shrugged vaguely. "It's...it's nothing too-"

                "It's the radicals."

                Mike set his jaw. It unsettled him sometimes, Erwin's perception. "I wasn't about to report a hunch."

                "But it's more than that. The cities and villages you chose have coincided with a record number of radical captures once we gave the local divisions enough support to track them. You said once, that you could smell them, the blood on them, right? However you're doing it-"

                "What, gonna lend me to Intermipol or something?"

                Erwin gave him such a scathing look that Mike laughed, the sound echoing and drawing the eye of an early riser or two across the street.

                "No chance. You're all mine."

                "Poor Nile. Shouldn't he get some of me, too?"

                "Nile's gonna be fine."

               Mike hummed.  "Will he?" They hadn't discussed where Nile fit into the campaign.

                Maybe it was wrong to think he still knew Nile now because he knew him then. He was no less humorless and derisive than he remembered him as an undergrad, but superficial temperaments aside, he wasn't a malicious man. He could be reasoned with. Mike wondered if Erwin thought the same.

                 Erwin's face hardened. The sun began to rise in earnest, but the wind was no less chilling.

                "It's up to him," he finally said.

                They killed time until the rest of the division rose. As Erwin stood and stretched, Mike looked up and said, "Hey, uh... don't-" he said, lifting two fingers and pantomimed a drag, "don't tell Levi."

                Erwin froze, smirk dying on his lips at Mike's severe expression. "Why-"

                "He caught me in Odessa. Wouldn't even let me explain, said-" Mike stopped, struck by the week-old conversation he hadn't entirely processed until now.

                "Said what?"

                "Said I was a shit security chief for letting myself 'huff that shit.' He's been barking at my men since we left headquarters."

                "Really."

                "Nothing outside his jurisdiction, I know you ordered him to discipline the agents, but...you know what, it's nothing-"

                "Mike," Erwin said, and with such intent that Mike sighed and went on.

                "He dropped off a list of cities to bypass and highways to avoid just before we left HQ. No explanation. Remember that vactrain transfer in Zurich? I check 'em out, and he's right. Caught things we wouldn't have in the broad sweeps we usually do. Crime rates, high Intermipol presence, protest zones, and on and on. Then I find out he fabricated orders to double security personnel around us. Around you.  In the last four cities, at least."

                "On operations?"

                "Nah, in transit, and down time. See her?" He said, pointing to an apartment window opposite them, four stories high. A woman sat by the windowsill, rubbing absently at the ears of a tawny kitten as she read a dog-eared book.

                "Convincing, right? She, and that one," he said, pointing to a man on the sixth floor balancing a cigar between his lips as he unclipped a pair of sliding windowpanes and wiped them down, "and that one," he said, pointing to a more distant window, through which he could barely make out a figure bustling in a kitchen, "are my agents. Found out too late again. Couldn't blow their cover."

                "What are they doing?"

                "Observing. Came out the second you did."

                Erwin watched the woman with the book. She smiled.

                "He's out of line," said Erwin.

                "Normally I'd agree, but I get it," Mike said tersely. "He's worried. And he's right."

                Erwin frowned. Mike gestured for him to sit and lend him his ear.

                "The extra detail's using broad range facial recognition equipment to flush out anyone who might have been following us," Mike whispered. "We have a lock on several dozen faces that've appeared near us in at least three divisions, at least three cities. Farlan's IDing them at HQ and holding onto the results until we get back. We can't risk receiving it electronically, and our couriers are stretched thin as it is. It's-"

                "Of course we're being followed. The CIA was beside itself when Shadis nominated me. They've doubled their watch since."

                "We won't take any chances," Mike said, "not with this project of yours."

                "We can't stretch ourselves thin, either."

                "Might not have a choice."

 

*

 

               

                He rode into the town alone. The rendezvous was set. The day was young.

                The deputy leaned on what remained of a wooden fence. He brushed the jagged, dusty edges that were once crumbling char, and before then, hastily chopped and nailed boards to separate stable grounds from the main street. Horseshoes caked with rust lay scattered in the dusky ruins.

                The thudding gallops of approaching horsemen drew his eye. He tied his own to a post, strode down the center of the broad, empty street in the abandoned town, and waved. Three, Mike counted. Something else dawned on him as they drew nearer, as the deputy unhooked his holsters and tossed them aside.

                They were natives.

                 The riders disembarked and watched the deputy closely. One rummaged in his jacket and checked for hidden blades. At a nod, he withdrew, and another, a broad, imposing man, spoke to the deputy. Mike couldn't understand a word.   

                His panic abated when another rider began translating.

                "We have your report. Do you have ours?"

                "I do," said the deputy.

                What followed was a chain of directions and movements and locations and peoples Mike had no particular interest in, aside from an occasional line that suggested that the Recon Rangers and local tribes exchanged information on titan movements, and that neither harbored any sympathy for the creatures. The deputy relayed his report to the stony face of the man Mike presumed to be the leader among the three. The third rider, and the youngest, circled around them all and paid them little mind, more engrossed with watching the deputy's mare and patting her dark snout. He bent, grabbed a fallen twig, and traced the grooves her hooves imprinted in the earth.

                The translator stopped him every few sentences and relayed them in her tongue to the man, who reacted with sharp nods and little else. Mike was reminded of Erwin's tightly set jaw and hard eyes when negotiating with federal agents or Intermipol chiefs. Mike wondered if the deputy thought the same.

                As they spoke, however, Mike was drawn by something else. An odor lingered on their clothes, on their skin. Something raw, something fresh. Something unmistakable.

                The world shuddered again. White noise flooded his ears and muddied the exchange between the deputy and the riders.

                His heart thudded in his ears. Rather, the deputy's. Or was it his own? The uncertainty lit a fire under his skin, wired his nerves hot. The information exchange must have finished, as the three began making their way to their horses.

            The deputy inhaled deeply.

            "Wait," he said.

            He sensed it too.

            The riders turned slowly, uneasily. Feet shuffled. Hands inched toward holsters.

            The deputy turned to the translator. "There's titan stink all over you. Fresh, or else it would've been long gone."

            The translator repeated the line slowly, lowly. The broad man murmured something in return.

            "We came across one on the way. A straggler. It is none of your concern."

            "No," the deputy said, and took a step forward. The youngest leapt back skittishly. The deputy raised his arms and pleaded, "It was more than one. You're all soaked with the scent, there had to have been more."

            The translator relayed this to the trio's leader and engaged him in a terse debate of which neither Mike nor the deputy understood a word. His eye caught on the twitching fingers of the youngest, who stood with his back to the pair to hide his hands . All but a thumb and forefinger wagged. Eight. The deputy's jaw fell slack with shock.

            "Titans rarely crawl around in packs," the deputy said to the riders, careful to not implicate the boy's goodwill, "Two's a rarity, three's almost unheard of. If you  can tell us anything, anything at all-"

            "We have nothing more to say," said the translator.

            As they hoisted themselves onto their horses, the deputy pleased to each in turn. Mike didn't pretend to understand the nuisances of the Recon Rangers' negotiations with the natives, but his appealing glances to all three suggested such a delicate relationship that even a discovery like this was not worth upsetting it.

            Only the youngest returned his look. He waved goodbye.

            The deputy returned to his horse, eyes cast downward as the sun beat over his head. He might have missed it had he looked elsewhere. Rings and carved patterns radiated from his mare's hooves. The deputy smiled at the boy's handiwork and untied the reigns from the post. As she moved forward, her passing shadow revealed more marks, marks he had missed. There were stars and flowers. Trees and mountains. There was a word. An English word.

            The deputy knelt over it.

 

            K R O N O S

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your comments and kudos :*


	6. Devil and the Deep Red Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [The Neighbourhood - Staying Up](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uco1JQRVqrA&feature=youtu.be)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hold up:  
> 1\. (((wow))) thanks so much for reading and commenting I'm a lil floored  
> 2\. went back to establish that SC HQ is in fact in nyc because I wasn't sure then how much I wanted geography to factor but now... lmao...

            Four months and fifty-two cities. The end of April saw the conclusion of the Survey Corps' global division survey. Rain bombarded the city at their return. It didn't abate for days.

            Rain pelted his helmet in waves as the commander rode through jammed intersections and sliced through alleyways and empty lots. He avoided a cluster of converging marchers and rode through streets plastered with the remnants of parades and protests, through the blip and wail of sirens.

            The road became harsher as he neared a warehouse district. He rode through bustling lots and past the odd abandoned umbrella, upturned, ribs bent and snapped and flimsy, filthy fabric collecting rainwater until it burst. 

            Erwin entered the belly of a corner warehouse, waved hello to the workers hauling merchandise into a truck and approached the gates of an industrial elevator. He swiped an ID card to call it. He frowned at the worn edges as he waited. He and Mike had started to toy with the idea of reinventing Survey Corps IDs. Nanaba swore off implants. Hange needed something that was all but glued to them to remember it. It was one of their more difficult side projects.

            The doors scraped open with a metallic whine. Erwin hauled his bike inside and watched his reflection ripple and warp in a puddle before the doors shut.

            They opened again to a pair of plainclothes doormen. Erwin greeted them, entrusted his bike to one, and followed the other through a low-ceilinged passageway. Damp brick peeked through blistering paint. They tread on floors unpaved and slicked with the signs of the tempest above. Erwin removed his helmet and held his breath against the musty odor that clung to the walls.        

            They passed through one security checkpoint, then another, and a next. The rooms became progressively better lit, and he soon breathed without the fear that his nose might abandon him for forcing it through the subterranean musk. Cables that were before tangled and exposed had become neatly tucked along corners or hidden entirely. As he stepped through the last checkpoint, a familiar face greeted him, though not a cheerful one.

            "Mike," he called in greeting, and Mike, face grim, walked him past the entrance and through the thrumming center of the Survey Corps' central security hub, their experts flitting from one console to another to advise, adjust and assemble in controlled chaos. It was one of many tucked into the earth past tunnels and gas lines and spread throughout the city like so many eyes and ears.

            Mike opened an office door and as Erwin stepped inside, Mike took one last glance at the busy atrium and inhaled deeply. He waved away Erwin's inquisitive glance and stepped inside.

             Farlan rose to greet him.

            "Commander! Welcome back."

            Mike locked the door.

            Farlan briefed the commander on the most urgent division updates. Of them, Project Firefly was most impressive. In their absence, Isabel had found Hange's old designs for a citywide detection system and Farlan put the division to work to make it live and breathe. It was a network of motion and infrared sensors distributed across the city providing a live geographical  feed of hotspots in the hopes of catching potential titan movements, as titan bodies produce enormous heat signatures. Proper calibration remained an obstacle, but their progress was admirable.

            Some updates were less attractive than others. A virus had burrowed into their systems while they were gone. Not debilitating by any means, beyond forcing them to divert resources to sweep their systems and assess damage, but telling. Its makeup, Farlan said, suggested a targeted attack.

            "A few well-timed diversions means damage had to be soaked up by the automated security systems in the emergency safe houses," Mike explained. "We still have the older ones, but I'd rather we get the bug outta here before we need any of 'em."

            "While we wrestle with that one," Farlan said, "I bang my head against wall about these faces you bring back." He handed Erwin a folder.

            Erwin opened it. "How so?"

            "They are not faces."

            Erwin came to a sets of photographs of the individuals who Levi and Mike had suspected of tracking their movements abroad. 

            "Look closely," said Farlan.

            Erwin saw it. Aside from distinguishing details like clothing, jewelry and hair, all eighteen faces were identical. They were not faces. They were masks.

            "How did we not-"

            "May not realize at time because software zeros in on key points like bridge of nose, shape of eyes, symmetry, stuff like that. Things like hair and makeup hide or warp those features. But we take closer look and," Farlan said, shrugging, "no ID match, nothing. Can only say they organized. Whoever followed you."

            "Levi was right," Erwin muttered. Mike's jaw worked, but he said nothing.

            "What's the plan?" Farlan asked. "Send report to Intermipol? CIA?"

            Erwin looked at the faces again.

            "No. Not yet," he said. They couldn't rule out Intermipol's involvement. With any luck, whoever sent these masked spies may  have no idea the Survey Corps had caught on. This may yet play in their favor.

            "Thank you, Farlan," Erwin said, but as he neared the door, he turned and gave Farlan a searching look. To Mike, he said, "Excuse us," and stepped aside as Mike nodded and shut the door behind him. Farlan looked up.

            "Mike? No," he said, cocking his head as Erwin came back to the desk and sat in the chair opposite, "Commander."

            "Impressive. Are mine heavier or Mike's?"

            "Not so much heaviness of footsteps," Farlan grinned, pleased with himself. "Is timing. Mike has longer stride. What can I do for you?"

            "I looked at the hours you logged while we were gone."     

            Farlan froze. "Oh. Is there problem?"

            "Is there, Farlan?" Erwin asked softly, though it might have been more unnerving than a shout.

            Farlan swallowed hard. "I...I do not think I...if I need to be working longer, I-"

            "I've doctored documents for a very long time," Erwin said. "You know that's not why I ask."       

            Farlan opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again. He sank into his chair and laughed nervously. "This is embarrassing," he admitted.

            "Your work here is invaluable. But if you're down here for days without a break, you and your work will suffer. Burnout is real. And it's dangerous. I appreciate your dedication, but if I catch you editing your logs again-"

            "I overstepped, commander, I know. I-I will not do it again," Farlan said quickly, cheeks and ears burning.

            Erwin was struck with the familiarity of the scene. Only, he had been the flushed, overzealous recruit at the mercy of a superior officer once upon a time.

            He chanced a closer look at the office. The mass of objects he hadn't had the opportunity to spare more than a glance for before were largely machine parts and cables lining the walls with an intimate sense of order.  Small, delicate parts, however, were scattered across his desk with more abandon, as if thrown about in frustration. A magnifying lens was put off to the side. A sheen of dust covered it, as if it had been placed there mistakenly and forgotten ever since.

            "Have your accommodations been sufficient?"

            Farlan blinked at the change, then nodded eagerly, too eagerly. "Is perfect. Thank you." 

            "If there's anything else we can do to-"

            "It's fine, it's- I have everything I need, thank you."

            There was no doubt now. Erwin leaned forward, watched Farlan's jaw set as he heard his chair groan, and said, "You survived a blow I have never seen an agent walk away from alive. You recovered, and not by some miracle but by your own resilience, your strength of will. You mastered your training with incredible speed and precision, and in a language that wasn't your first. If there is _ever_ anything that you need, anything at all, do not think for a second that I will think less of you for it. It would be my privilege to assist you."

            No one had seen what had happened. Isabel refused to speak of it. But the trauma, the surgeons had said, was consistent with a pair of titan fingers gored into both sockets, as well as the jostling of having been dragged in this grip. But he had fought. He survived. He returned.

            Farlan laughed softly and rubbed his neck, then his shoulder. "I'm..." he started.

            "We're coming into a sensitive time. I need everyone at their best."

            "I understand. Sometimes I think I feel ground shaking with all these marches."

            "Sounds about right. Half a million strong up there."

            "Wow. Was there... marches abroad?"

            "Many. Disorganized, though. Not enough to turn heads."

            "Not yet," they both said. Farlan grinned. Erwin couldn't help but return it.

            Levi would not have divulged any part of their covert exposé to him or Isabel. He knew the importance of discretion.

            But Farlan didn't need to be told. In four months, he had repurposed his jury-rigged knowledge of security systems and streamlined almost every security operation in the Survey Corps. Data streams were better monitored, encryptions stronger, communication faster. Erwin was not even a third of the way through the exhaustive security report in his office. Despite losing his eyes, Farlan had never truly lost his sight.

            "Don't hesitate to come to me, for any reason. As you were," Erwin said and stood, unlocking the door and opening it with a soft click.

            "Wait."

            Farlan stood and approached him, familiar enough with his own office to forgo the cane. As his hands reached for his dark glasses, Erwin shut the door. As he took them off, Erwin was thoroughly humbled.

            "There is something I...maybe I...wanted to ask if-"

            "Anything."

            "Just... advice. I heard of, of an operation. Isabel told me, actually. Think she got it from Zoë. Or Levi. I think," he added in a conspiratorial whisper, "they are all in on it. Anyway, it is some big new thing, new fancy combination op to regrow optic nerve, attach to 3D printed eyes-" He waved it off and said, "Detail not important, I just...I know they, they want..."

            "What do _you_ want?"

            Farlan crossed his arms and tucked his hands into his sides. He shook his head and whispered, "I don't know. It might work, it might...it might not. Recovery will be hell all over again. Again with doctors and hospitals and drugs, I...I don't want to disappoint them-"

            "You won't. They only want the best for you."

            "But what does that mean? Is not so easy. No right answer."

            "I know." Erwin put a hand on his shoulder, slight, tentative. When he saw that Farlan didn't flinch away, he held him more firmly. "We can't make the choice for you. But whatever it is, you have our support."

            Farlan smiled faintly. Erwin left with the overwhelming feeling of having done all he could, and not nearly enough.

            Mike escorted him to the elevator in silence, but instead of heading back once the doors opened, he entered with him. The lift began to move. Machinery clanked dully above them and below.

            Without warning, Mike swiped his ID through a console and stopped the lift, disabling even the lamps. Red emergency lights flickered on as the carriage ground to a halt in a transmission dead zone.

            "We're compromised," Mike said. Erwin's skin crawled as if he himself was infested. 

            "Radicals?"

            "Maybe."

            "Maybe?"

            "It's-" Mike started, eyes wandering around the lift, every plate and handle and nail bathed in red, "-it's the same blood stink, but light. So light I could barely catch it."

            Erwin watched him, watched the searing red reflected in his hair, his eyes.

            "I can't pinpoint them this time either," he said with a grimace. "I've tried, I've isolated each one and still-"

            "There are other ways," Erwin said, hoping to reassure him. "Your count?"

            "Two."

            "You're sure?"

            "Exactly two." 

            "Anything else?"

            Mike exhaled harshly.

            "Yes."

            Erwin had the distinct impression of having stumbled into a confessional, its walls fittingly stained with a hellish red. Mike hadn't looked at him once.

            "They aren't recruits or new hires," Mike said, eyes fixed on the wall opposite, brows drawn.

            "Contractors?" Erwin tried.

            Mike screwed his eyes shut and shook his head. "Third years. Ground team," he admitted in a forced exhalation. "Security - my - division."

            Third year veterans. Three years. The lift could have begun a free fall and Erwin's shock would not have been greater.

            "I missed them," Mike said, and stared ahead with an awful rigidity, a cadaverous stillness. "I missed them for three years."

            Erwin collected his scrambled thoughts."No," he said, "Round up their records. Service, public, health, private, all of it. They could as easily be doctored, forged," he added quickly, "and so-called witnesses to their service threatened or bribed. We'll sort through-"

            "Then you would have to start with mine because I know every one of my Third Years and I know 'em damn well," Mike said savagely. Mike wouldn't look at Erwin. He glanced away from a reflective plate on the console. He wouldn't look at himself.

            "How many third year ground team veterans are there in the security division?" Erwin demanded.

            "Fourteen."

            "And you would testify on behalf of the service records and moral character of all fourteen."

            "Yes."

            "Yet in the three days since our return, you sensed two radicals among them."

            "Yes."

            "Radicals who have successfully integrated themselves into our most vulnerable division for three consecutive years without detection."

            Mike raised his chin as if in a silent appeal.

            "Yes."

            He turned then, and finally looked at Erwin.

            "I take full responsibility," Mike said. "Security should've been tighter. Should've caught them sooner. I should've-" He broke off and looked away, shame clawing under his skin.

            At that, Erwin's instincts throttled every blush of empathy in his heart. He did not know until then that he had been waiting for this very moment for months.

            Close though they were, Mike was an exceedingly private man. One could sooner squeeze a symphony from a blade of grass than persuade him to reveal a single word he doesn't intend to divulge. Prodding blindly into his restless nights and still more restless dreams would yield not only nothing, but less than even that. If Erwin did not breech the subject mindfully as a friend, it will be closed off to him permanently.

            If he demanded an explanation as a commander, he would sever Mike's trust in him in the same instant. Ordinarily.

            But not now. Not now that Mike was ready to throttle himself for an error that was anything but. And it truly was no error. Erwin was sure of it, as sure as someone who has been taking notes and joining the pieces.

            Isabel's rescue. Farlan's. An offhand word about dreams in Manitoba. A too-specific diagnosis of the sleep aid Halcion. The heightened olfaction he admitted to in Ankara. Mike's increasingly restless nights throughout the division survey. His nightly wanderings. His dreams.

            It was no error but a miracle. Mike's sense of smell had been improving for months. He himself was not aware of the change. It had been too incremental. That he could sense sleeper agents despite having known and trained and befriended them himself was more extraordinary than Erwin could have ever thought possible.

            But he could not tell him this now. Not when Erwin had leverage. Mike was too shaken to think clearly. He would answer to everything, admit to anything. 

            "Mike-" Erwin began.

            Still another thought stopped him. Mike boasted about his Third Years without end. They were his charges and his shameless pride. And still he came to Erwin.

            His bones ached when theirs bruised. His soul shuddered when theirs flickered away. l His heart sank when theirs slide into titan gullets. He loved them. He could have chosen to resolve the matter himself and spare them the humiliation of having unknowingly harbored spies, spared them the suspicion of treason. And still he came to Erwin.  And still he trusted him.

            Erwin nodded once. "Thank you," he said.

            Mike frowned and cocked his head as if he had misheard.

             "Three years...there's no telling what the damage is," Erwin added, "But you caught them just in time."

            "But I-"

            "Missed them before, yes. But so did everyone else. So did I."

            The matter was to be resolved quietly. Erwin instructed Mike to be on standby for further orders and resume his usual operations while Erwin pulled their records for review. That the spies were not aware that they knew of their infiltration, as with the masked in Ankara, may  again be their greatest advantage.

            Neither mentioned dreams.

 

            He should have never entertained the thought at all. There was no time to chase whimsical hunches. Dreams were all they were.

            Erwin bristled at the silent void of an empty home. A singing hinge and clicking lock boomed through the crackle of white noise. He felt at once hollow and full and split open, and at the click of the latch, every neatly compartmentalized thought clawed out and scrambled over the other to flood the silence. Calling it a home was generous. It was only where he bathed and slept.

            He chose a station at random on his phone,switched on speakers, and let nameless crooners fill his head as he stepped into a shower. He noting the progress of a healing lesion on his thigh and purpling bruises on his hips and chest, the newest entries in the service record tattooed on his skin. He looked up and down the length of his right arm, turned his forearm, made a fist. Golden hairs flattened under the hot stream. The aches hadn't lessened.

            Continual-activation theory. Hange had been reading a book opened to that name a few days prior to their operation in Manitoba. He had chased the lead afterward. Dream theory. Unconscious information flow. Memory flow.

            Manitoba itself. Levi had taken so much Halcion that stopping had invited a fever. Levi, who would, by his own admission, sooner order a shot of bleach than overdose, overdrink, even smoke.

            And Mike.

            Erwin rinsed his hair. He shut his eyes against the falling suds.

            Men on wires. Giants. Walls. His dreams had even given him an idea for how to eliminate titans in similar bait and hook formations in the air. A trial run in Johannesburg was wildly successful. His reward was the scarlet and purple and blue painting his skin. He didn't want to overestimate the significance of these absurd dreams to the Survey Corps' success. He shouldn't give them legitimacy. It was always just a dream.

            Hange was restless and building something in enormous secrecy. Mike's heightened sense had found deeply embedded spies. And Levi.

            He carded his hands through his hair. Levi would fly in tomorrow night with the remaining Corps' detachment as per their divided arrival times. He could simply ask. He had only to ask.

            Levi. Erwin hadn't seen him for nearly a week. He hadn't heard his voice in as long. They had fallen behind schedule ever since the incursion in Trinidad so they split up often so as to visit four cities or villages at once. Erwin idled under the stream and wondered how he would greet him, what he would say. How he would say it.

            Another song started and startled him out of the idle thought.

 

            Over the shoulders and under the arms. Crossed over thighs. Wound against calves. The depressions in his skin weren't red, weren't fresh. Not anymore. He looked over himself - himself - in the mirror on the inside of the armoire door. It was him. His face. His eyes. His body. But he saw himself as if having taken the same path in another forest, another continent, another Earth. Both crawled with behemoths. Both thrummed with purpose.

            Erwin's eyes snapped open. The armoire was gone. The walls were gone. He was in his office, his hair tousled, eyelids heavy with sleep. He could have sworn he had only put his head down for a moment. It was always only a moment.

            The city rumbled through the windows. The protesters were not an occasional disturbance anymore. The windows stopped little of the crack and pop of suppression fire and tear gas. Chants and song spilled through.

            Their raw footage had been delivered by private courier to Moblit immediately following each operation. Hange was reluctant to leave him behind, but they understood. He could be trusted, and he had both the artistry and technical ability to splice and edit the material in time for Erwin's return and review.

            Momentum was finite. Incensed though it was at the systematic property and human rights abuses their government sanctioned to delegitimize and conceal the titan threat, the city, the world, could not roar forever. The film will either ride this wave or none at all.  

            Erwin lightened his grip on his pen. His signatures had begun flying off the page. He shifted, and the lamplight drew his eye as its reflection scorched white hot into ink that spelled "-our deepest sympathies-". It shone on the letters as if it meant to burn straight through.

            He locked up and stepped outside.  He walked, and his shadow was torn into two and three and four by traffic lights and lampposts and billboards, each dimmer than its paling brother. He walked until they reunited and darkened. He walked until his shadow poured over wooden rails and salt lingered in the air.

            The harbor's black waters sloshed like a river of ink, and at the thought, Erwin rubbed his hands where they bore fresh stains. That afternoon, he had been taken aback for a moment when the ink stains had not hissed off his skin when they fell, when he mistook the spatter for another kind. He wondered if the harbor could hold all the blood his orders had ever spilled.

            The waters drew him. He was lured here every night since his return as if by a wire wound round his heart and pulled taut as if the ocean meant to cradle him in its arms forever. As if the current wound the wire about itself and pulled and pulled and pulled.

            "Hey, Aivazovsky."

            The voice rose over the hum of distant marchers and the swell of swollen waves. A shadow joined his own.

            "I read your report, Interim Commander," he said as Nanaba approached. "I expect a Corps-wide mutiny any second."

            "I know, I know. I'm the best," she smiled. "Ready for the second one?"

            Erwin nodded. Nanaba's four month operations report was comprehensive, but certain items were damning for all but his ear, and his alone. Nanaba herself knew little of what she relayed from Erwin's contacts to Erwin himself as they strode along the length of the harbor. Much of it was encoded so that even his contacts knew only one piece or another, but never the whole.  

            "There should be something else."

            "Best for last," Nanaba said. "Remember Miss Iaso? She's sitting on something she called 'The Severance Package' as of last week. Guessin' you know what that's about."

            His breath caught in his throat. The lights across the water stung with renewed intensity.

            "You definitely know how to bury a lead," he said incredulously.

            "Shit. Was that- oh my god, was that time sensitive, I mean she didn't tell me, I thought-"

            Erwin laughed softly. "You're in the clear. But this - this is good for us. All of us."

            "Ah. Alright. You sure you wanna play ball with someone who botched Iaso, though? My god, _Iaso_?" Nanaba said. The spy had just barely kept the Survey Corps out of international scrutiny when her activities aroused the suspicions of Iaso Industries and prompted a private but harrowing trial. She was acquitted. Then she disappeared.

            Erwin came to a stop, waited for Nanaba to do the same, and leaned forward to whisper, "I don't see why not. She followed my orders flawlessly."

            Nanaba blinked once, twice, then opened and closed her mouth.

            "You're kidding," she said with a laugh. "So that whole fundraiser was a cover? Or- no no, don't tell me, knowing you, it was some two-birds-one-stone shit...not bad, Smith, pulled that one over me."

            "About time," he teased.       

            "Don't count me out yet."

            She said it with a smirk, but her eyes hardened.

            "Not now that you're onto your next big thing," she said carefully.

            Their coats rippled in a cool breeze. He suppressed a shudder.

            An unspoken rule bound their professional relationship. When Erwin became commander, he discovered immediately that micromanaging her leadership proved disastrous. Morale plummeted. Operations suffered. A less forgiving commander might have attributed the setbacks to incompetency on her part.

            Instead, Erwin had taken a step back. And another. And a third. And when he had moved to the very periphery of her command, she rose. A single squad, he theorized, bored her into complacency. But two or three or four was a challenge, and one she met again and again. The report he received upon his return even struck in him a flare of rivalry. The Corps had never run so efficiently, had never been as lean, as lethal. Nanaba was a good squad leader, but an excellent commander.

            "Don't sweat it. I followed your orders before-"

            But the very person who Erwin trusted to manage the Corps in his absence would suffer should he breath a word of his extralegal affairs to her. The microscopically precise orders that are critical in the success of covert operations would be anathema to Nanaba's, whose orders operated sinuously with his, but only just. Only at a distance. A step closer, and her potential was wasted, and his own duties tripled. Despite his best efforts, he could not involve her in the Corps' espionage operations, least of all their exposé.

             So he gave her the medical division. The legal division. Ground teams. And when he left, he gave her all the Corps.  His generosity was well-intentioned, and it was cruel, and it was too much, and it was not nearly enough.

            "-and I'll do it again." she said. Her eyes chanced on the waters. They joined the swelling waves in their rise and fall.

            Nanaba deserved better. She deserved more.

            "I know," he said quietly, and her eyes stilled as if having sunk to the riverbed.

            He once attempted to promote her. She could have commanded any division in any city in the world.  She refused. By her own admission, she would sooner be a single cell in the Survey Corps' heart than the overseer of a limb. Erwin wondered if a better commander might by now have demanded it, might have given her a continent or a hemisphere, might have given her all the world. But It was not for him to decide. Not if he wanted her loyalty, her respect.

            He had been selfishly relieved. He needed an ally for the bad days and a successor for the worst. That her desires coincided with his designs was a coincidence, he thought then. He wasn't as sure now.

            A ship's horn blaring against the rhythmic swell beneath the docks, beneath their feet.

            "I want you to order a psych eval," said Nanaba.

            Erwin listened.

            "Discreet. Corps-wide. You all just came back, it's the perfect time. Culture shock or whatever. No one'll piss and moan too much."

            Erwin hummed in agreement.

            "And Smith?"

            He met her eye.

            "If anyone-" she said, throwing generous weight on the _anyone_ , "asks, the idea was yours."

            Of course. If Mike had started dreaming before they left, Nanaba would have known.

            Division barracks abroad were not built equally. Some walls were thinner than others. Others had no walls but simple blinds and curtains. He wondered if he should confide in Nanaba how little Mike had slept, how often he wandered, how often he found him on a balcony, on a roof, on the steps or at a window as if bent over not from the sweet hold of sleep but from a singular, cerebral exhaustion.

            He wondered how he should say that he only found him on that balcony in London or the cracked steps in Ankara because his own dogged dreams had forced him out of bed.

            "He doesn't tell you about them either," he chanced. "The dreams."

            Nanaba's look froze the air between them. It was confirmation enough.

            "Please. Order the eval," she said, and left with a curt "Night."

            "Good night," he returned, but the words sounded trite. She roared away on her bike.

            Erwin crossed one street and the next on his way to his flat. He looked back at the waters for a last lingering moment before they were lost to the maze of glass and steel.

            The hairs at his nape stood as he turned a corner. He unbuttoned his coat and saved himself a precious second should he need the pistol at his side.

            The hairs on his arms stood now, and a dull ringing met his ears. Then a thought came to him. A ridiculous one.  He stopped, lips quirking into a grin.

            "C приездом," Erwin said into the dark. _Welcome back._

            "Tch," he heard behind him. Erwin smiled in greeting as Levi dropped the shadow act with an exaggerated scuff of his heel. There was an errant thread on the cuff of his sleeve. The barest wrinkle threaded through his cravat and disappeared as it slipped beneath the lapels of a dark jacket. Glowing storefronts and flickering streetlamps flung wild shadows across his thin nose and temperamental mouth, across the windswept rosy blush in his ears.

            "I didn't know you were back. When did you fly in?"

            "No. First you will tell me what you're doing at shit o'clock without a fucking escort-"

            Erwin laughed through the lecture and ushered him forward. They passed the glare of 24/7 shop signs, passed liquor stores and pulsing clubs.

            "Huh."

            "What?" Levi snapped.

            "Look at that," Erwin said cheekily, "An escort."

            Levi whistled angrily through his teeth. "You take too many fucking risks-"

            "Do you mean to say you're not a good enough escort?" Erwin asked in mock shock.

            "You got me."

            "Your resume said otherwise. Lying about your credentials is a dischargeable offense."

            "Then fire me."

            Erwin tsked. "Then who will deal with our tea surplus?"

            "Careful. I'm starting to think you missed me."

            Levi had arrived several hours ago. After debriefing his regiment, he had gone straight to Isabel and Farlan. Isabel's gardens were to Levi's liking, though they had passed three blocks before he was through with cataloging the inefficiencies in her plot layout. Farlan's work impressed him likewise, with one exception.

            "Moron works so much he forgets to eat and shit. Like you. Big wonder who he takes after-"

            "I found the forged logs too. I let him know what I thought of them.  No need to-"

            "From now on I'll read them aloud over the loudspeaker until he dies from embarrassment and reincarnates into someone who doesn't mistake his growling stomach for jammed laptop fan."

            Erwin's attempts to discourage that endeavor were unsuccessful.

            They walked in comfortable silence then. Erwin's attempts to cross at red lights were met with hard tugs and scowls, even on empty streets. Having grown annoyed at reaching out so often, Levi decided to hook his arm with Erwin's to stop him at his next transgression. He didn't have to.

            Erwin's thoughts returned to Mike, to Hange, to the dreams. To Levi, to the Halcion. He never did ask why he had taken it. Levi never offered to say.

            It had been an idle curiosity at the time, but now they had a virus. Masked spies abroad. Sleeper spies at home. If the dreams had only been his own, he would not have spared them a second thought, but they weren't. They were shared.  It could well be another means of crippling the Corps. Hallucinogens. Psychoactives slipped into their food, into their air.  

            Erwin thought back to the division survey. Mike's sleep was fitful. Hange never slept at regular hours, so he couldn't be sure. He had never seen Levi sleep.

             He considered whether he would admit to his own dreams if asked outright, and knew that he wouldn't. Yet he expected them to do the same.  

            "Hey. You look constipated. More than usual, I mean."

            Erwin's lip twitched into the start of a placating smile, but he thought better of it.

            "Something is happening. Something out of my control," Erwin started, speaking before he could convince himself to stop, "Something I've never seen before. If I'm too quick to make sense of it, it could destroy the exposé. It might even disintegrate the Survey Corps' leadership."

            "Then wait."   

            "I could be too late."

            "Then act."

            "I could be too forward."       

            "Then, Commander, use your best judgment."

            Erwin fell quiet. It was only fair that Levi answered one ambiguity with another.

            He wondered how much Levi knew. That could have been the catalyst for his sudden caution, for overstepping into the security division's jurisdiction in Ankara. If he dreamt. If he saw each night what Erwin saw.

            Levi spoke up suddenly. "That Firefly shit should have been in every fucking city by now.  Sure, fix the pinging first in the Lincoln Tunnel and Panac-"

            "What pinging?" Erwin asked sharply.

            "I don't know, someone shoving tunnel sensors up their ass."         

            "We should-"

            "They did. They swept that tunnel so clean I can almost look at it. Is just calibration error. And anyway," he said heatedly, "You had these plans for years. Why-"

            "Budget. Timing."

            "Then why didn't you-"

            "Propose it to Intermipol? The U.N.?" Erwin finished, and answered Levi with a withering look.

            "So they took a shit on that too," Levi scowled.

            "That's why our work is important," Erwin said. "Why we need to be the model for anti-titan measures, to make the public see that they are real and dangerous, but there's a way. There's always a way. We only have to pool our efforts. We can eliminate the threat, we can-"

            The moon peeled apart until the sun glared through its crumbling husk. Its rays streamed through buildings until they crumbled, their ashes blown wide by gales as trunks groaned in their wake and leaves budded and flared and fell. Grass split sidewalks and streets as if their blades were not velvet but steel. In moments, it carpeted the earth for miles, their blades arching and swirling like the swell of a gentle sea.

            There was a hand on his arm. He turned. Levi stared as Erwin followed the lines of black leather on his chest and hips and legs, winding under a tan jacket and sleek boots. Wings rested on his chest.

            Levi opened his mouth to speak, and out came sounds that Erwin certainly heard but could not hope to understand. The words were lucid, but they were in no language he had ever heard.

            Erwin had just walked the streets of New York. A beat-up muscle car had rumbled past him four, five seconds ago. He had not yet laid down. He was not yet asleep. He was supposed to have fallen asleep. He should have first fallen asleep.

            Levi frowned and repeated himself. The ground shuddered beneath their feet. A white scar threaded across Levi's hand, curling from palm to knuckle. The sky darkened as the trunks shimmered, its leaves curling into themselves and into nothing at all. The sun splintered. His lungs burned. The grass dried and crackled deafeningly. Hands curled into his shirt.  Erwin raised his hands instinctually  - he didn't expect them to move. The dreams followed a logic all their own. His other body had never obeyed. Yet they rose.

             They rose to the smaller hands tangled in his shirt and slotted his fingers into theirs. And he squeezed once, because it could have been a coincidence. And he squeezed again, because it could have been a coincidence. And three times, his limbs obeyed.

            Erwin turned Levi's left wrist in his hand. He watched the ghostly white scar wither and vanish and the leather straps crack and fall and the tan jacket lengthen and darken as if plunged into ink. It didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. Erwin shut his eyes. It was a dream. It wasn't a dream. It was supposed to be just a dream.

            He knew he could breathe again when the stench of exhaust floods his nose. His eyes flew open. He heard himself gasping.

            He was holding something. "It's gone," he muttered breathily, turning the wrist in his hand, a scar on the index finger and on the palm, but not where it was before. Levi stared, slack-jawed.

            Erwin dropped his hand.

            "I'm sorry," Erwin started, "I must have-"

            "Passed out on your feet?" Levi offered coldly.

            "More like passed over that coffee break," Erwin joked.

            "And your tank of oxygen? Yeah? What was that noise?" Levi pushed.

            The depth of his scowl carved new lines on his forehead. He had never looked so distressed.

            "And don't say _'nothing'_ , Levi added menacingly, "or I won't let you take a _shit_ without a security detail again-"

            "Just a-" Erwin started, finding the same frayed thread at the cuff of Levi's sleeve, the same wrinkle in the cravat, finding him, Levi, as he really was, where he truly was. Here. He was here. And so was Erwin. Erwin, who still saw the afterglare of vivid fields behind every blink, smelled heady, earthy sap lingering like an unwelcome friend, Erwin, who was here, was home, was on his own two feet and more grateful for the absence of sprightly spring grass than he had ever been in his waking life.

            "What," Levi repeated lowly, "was that sound you made?"

            "Why?" Erwin asked. "Did it sound familiar?"

            "Yeah. L-like a-" Levi stopped, as if stunned at his own stammering. "-like a strangled cat," he sneered, and broke into a rapid, unrelenting stride.

            Erwin didn't know if he would have reached the door of his flat without Levi's presence, without the guiding silhouette of his back and his fitful march. The odd ray of light filtered through solid stone. A blade of grass fluttered from the T of a stop sign.

             At the door, Erwin turned to him.

            "You shouldn't go around unescorted either," he said, "I'll call up a-"

            "Forget it. I'm not the one dreaming on his feet."    

            Erwin froze. Levi watched him. His hair fell over his narrowed eyes, eyes brimming with a singular challenge.

            " _Good night_ , commander," he said. He turned to leave.

            "Cтоять." _Stop._

            Levi obeyed. Erwin forced his mouth to part and the words to come. His heart bludgeoned against his chest.

            "Do you dream, Levi?"

            A beat.

            "No. No dreams."

            The answer echoed in the still hallway. Levi swung open the door to the stairwell, and he was gone.

            "No," Erwin repeated.

            Erwin walked through the curtain of tangled branches in his flat. He passed a contracting pupil whose lashes scraped the other side of a window pane. He plucked the blooming grass from his bed.

            Horses squealed around him. Rain thundered over their heads. Wooden beams and tent fabric snapped and caved behind them, behind the frenzied gallop of a hundred hooves. Content with the trampled dollhouses, titans the height of one tower and the girth of two hurtled after the startled dolls with open arms and howling maws. He tried to hasten his mount with a snap of the reigns, and his hands refused the order. He willed his voice to shout a command, and silence passed through his gritted teeth. A hand with fingers like knotted industrial barrels closed around his waist.

            Erwin jerked awake. He drew breath as if he had just slipped from the arms of a current. His eyes adjusted to the dark. The branches were gone. The eye had gone. No grass littered his bed, his floor. His right arm ached.

            A sliver of light flared from between a bedside stand and his downturned phone. He reached forward, half expecting his arm to remain still. Three minutes ago, Levi had sent him a single text.

 

            _"just nightmares"_

             

          


	7. Panacea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [Massive Attack - Angel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM7QBM0cpQ4&feature=youtu.be)

 

 

 

          Hange's office was bolted shut. Erwin's knocks went unanswered. His calls had gone unreturned. Finally, Hange requested a sabbatical. It had been a week since he'd seen them.

            He heard a surprised sound behind him. Erwin turned as one of Hange's people bolted to his side.

            "R&D Senior Research Assistant Rosa Sanchez, Commander. R&D Division Chief Zoe insisted that uh, that no one disturb them this morning."

            "Long night?"

            "Long week, more like. Soon's they got back, it's a bee-line to that machine. 'S like the division poltergeist."

            "How so?"

            "Well..." she said, "no one's really...actually...seen it. No clue what it's for, either, but chief's mad about the thing, obse-ah-engaged, rather."

            "I wouldn't worry," Erwin said, catching the officer's unease. "Chief Zoe's methods are unusual, but we wouldn't be half the force we are without them. I'll honor their request."

            "Yes sir. Of course."

            The officer excused herself and returned to her duties. Erwin spared a last look at the door before making his way out of R&D.

            Last night's message put an end to his doubts. Levi agreed to meet him tonight. Until then, he would seek out Hange and Mike. He could dismiss simple dreams, but not what he saw last night. Not hallucinations. The moment his little problem left the privacy of his bed, it ceased to be solely his, and it ceased to be little. This was not his secret to keep anymore.

            A faint clinking met his ear. He stopped at the top of a stairwell to listen. He turned in time to see an Isabel-shaped blur bound past him, charms clinking against her metal leg. She leapt on a handrail with a 'hup', ground down its length, hopped off and raced forward again.

            With Moblit editing their footage, Hange gave Isabel many of his duties. At the moment, no one was closer to Hange than her. Erwin followed the clicks.

            He wove through a section of the laboratory complex he seldom roamed and found himself moving skyward. Double doors of reinforced glass stood tall at the end of a hallway. The greenhouse bathed him in natural light, and as he neared, he took in the labyrinthine sea of petals, shoots and vines. He unlocked the door with his ID and knocked. Something crashed in the back. Then again, louder. Isabel finally hopped into view, hands and hair caked in soil and bits of root. She raced to the doors, wiped at her red frock to get the worst of it off, and opened just long enough to pull Erwin inside with a surprisingly strong grip.

            "Quick! Don't want a draft," she demanded, and shut the door behind him. Erwin exhaled sharply at the tropical flush and tugged at his collar.

            "You've been busy," Erwin said.

            Isabel beamed and waved him over. She was never in one place for long, always winding through waves of bruised petals, their veins blindingly red and tips purpled and curling like swelling waves.

            Erwin traced shallow carvings on the pots as he trailed her and rubbed residual grains from his fingers. They were recent.  He imagined the carvings gone, and the flowers with them, imagined if Mike hadn't sensed that disturbance, hadn't followed his nose. The designs swept from one pot to the next in bold, sinuous curls, some touching, others resuming their curve on a pot several meters away. Isabel must have been hundreds of meters away.

            Erwin found her righting an upended sack of earth as she said, "Hange said my operations report was good. Was it good? Never wrote one before."

            "Exceptional."

            "Sweet," she said. Isabel and botany were an odd couple, Erwin thought. She was as restless as her charges were still. Yet they grew, and so did she.

            "Tch. Don't like this," she said, stopping after some time to rearrange a pair of plants and cross her arms.

            "How so?" To his untrained eye, they looked identical. "They're very similar."

            "Nope," Isabel said, glaring at one curving, broad-leafed plant and then the other. "This one wants it zipped," she said, flicking the leaf of one and pressing an index finger to her mouth, "But that one wants me to sing." She tapped the leaves of the other.

            Erwin was taken aback by her perception. He should have known that Hange's secrecy didn't end with Hange, that the most innocent outreach on his part would be met with suspicion from Isabel as well.

            Isabel hopped on a nearby stool and drew her knees to her chest. She snuck a glance at him as if waiting for an order. The expectation disheartened him. He hadn't meant to conflate an earnest visit with a potential pull of rank, but his timing betrayed him.

            Still, Isabel didn't have to show their cards so plainly. She could as easily have deflected his questions. Excused herself. Thrown him out, even. Her pointed warning may not have been one at all. It might have been an invitation.

            Erwin traced a leaf idly.

            "Do you want to play a game?"

            Isabel brightened slowly, carefully. "What game?"

            "Something I used to play with my father. A question for an answer. Answer a riddle and ask me anything you like."

            "Anything?"

            He returned her sly grin with his own. "Within reason."

            "If I can't answer?"

            "I get to ask you. Fair?"

            Isabel hummed for a moment, narrowing her eyes in thought. With a firm nod, she decided, and leapt off the chair.

            "Ready?"

            "Yep."

            "I run round and round the garden. I even come inside. But I don't touch a thing. Not the floor, not the wall. Not a petal, not even a speck of dirt. What am I?"

            Isabel screwed up her face in thought. She scratched her metal leg, as if she felt a phantom itch.

            "Ha! You're the sun."

            "Bravo," Erwin grinned.

            "Now I get a question?"

            "You do."

            "Mm...said you played this with your pop, yeah? What's he like?"

            He didn't expect that, but Isabel watched him so eagerly. He told her he was a schoolteacher. He told her he was at once gentle and firm, at once kind and melancholy. He told her of his father's love for the saxophone, of the stubborn callous on his finger from many stubborn decades of writing longhand, of the poems he knew by heart. Isabel was still, impossibly still as she listened, only to laugh when he laughed, and grow quiet when he did.

            "Where's he at? Do you visit? He still play the sax? Does he-"

            "Ah - a question for an answer. Your turn."

            "No fair! You had tons more practice."

            "You're getting yours now, no?"

            "Hm. Okay, okay.. mmm...okay. Oh! Okay. I connect two people... buuut I only touch one. Who am I?"

            Erwin thought through the possibilities with half a mind and studied Isabel with the other. The answer, his father had once said, was often written on your opponent's face. On the pull of the brow. The curl of the hand. Isabel drew her bottom lip into her mouth and narrowed her eyes slyly, a half-grin on her as if she had thought of something hilarious.

            Connects two people. Touches one. Isabel swung her legs wildly. He watched them swing forward and back. Forward and back.

 

_The man followed him into his too-small kitchen and hopped onto a counter. His eyes traveled over him as if he meant to tear him apart. Erwin brushed against his swinging legs each time he moved to grab something, only to find that it had been rearranged or cleaned._

 

            "A ring," Erwin murmured. "A wedding ring."

            "Agh, thought I'd got you!"

            Erwin nodded absently.

            "Hey! Your turn, remember?"

            They passed the better part of the morning in the game. He learned that Isabel's favorite flowers are Daylily Frans Hals - they reminded her of a pair of shoes she once had, shoes long since tattered and lost. They had been a gift from Farlan. She despised cold, but adored snow. She loved cooking shows, but couldn't make a thing. To her questions, Erwin admitted to sharing his father's fondness for the sax, for collecting golden age radio plays, for strolling by a waking sea.

            "Tiebreaker?" He suggested.

            "Hell yeah!" she said, and circled the greenhouse with a thoughtful hum. "Ah! Got one. Okay," she started, giving herself a drum roll with a pair of wooden stem supporters before tossing them aside.

            "Poke your fingers in my eyes and I'll open my mouth wide. My-" She stopped. A tremor plucked at her fingers. Then all of her shook.

            "I didn't-" she mumbled, eyes wide and terribly blank. "I didn't mean, I di-idn't-"

            Erwin took her shaking hands in his.

            "Look at me. You made it," he said evenly, "He made it. Farlan-"

            "I didn-n-n't- I didn-n't help-p-I was t-t-too-" Her eyes were glassy, unseeing. Erwin rubbed color back into her bloodless hands and stooped to meet her eye.

            "You're Isabel Magnolia. You're in your garden."

            "I'm in-I'm in th- I'm-"

            "You're safe. You're safe."

 

*

 

_"You're safe. You're safe. You're safe."_

_Hands curled into his shirt. They threaded through his damp hair. The distant chant echoed and faded, meaningless._ _Safe was meaningless. The air was stale. Bile rose in his throat._

_"You're Smith, you're Erwin Smith," the voice said, "You're in the northeast barracks. You made it. You made it. You made it through your first exp-"_

_Cold sweat shimmered on him like a second skin. A leather strap cut into his chest. Someone was shaking him. Someone shook the crunching and snapping and splattering from his ears, shook falling friends like broken dolls from his eyes._

_"Look-look at me, no- at me- me."_

_The dizzying hum in his head abated. He opened his eyes. Mike held him so tightly. Did he think he would float away? Dried blood ate through Mike's jacket. A deep cut marred that regal nose. Twigs and leaves were trapped in his disheveled hair. It was so long, and his face, so young. Erwin's mouth parted and his jaw ached as if shedding rust from its joints, as if he hadn't spoken in years._

_"You-" Erwin started, and though his voice was cracked and uneven and pitiful, Mike grinned broadly and nodded quickly, too quickly, and Erwin was dizzy again._

_When the world righted itself, Erwin picked a stray leaf from Mike's hair._

_"- look terrible."_

 

*

 

 

            "Farlan is here. He's safe."

            He repeated it until the racing pulse leveled in her wrists. He repeated it until she laughed softly.

            "I eat paper and c-cloth and b-board," she mumbled, "What a-am I?"

            Erwin rubbed his chin theatrically, as if deep in thought. Isabel giggled, the sound like the clink and chime of charms against her painted leg.

            "You wouldn't be a pair of scissors, would you?"

            Isabel nodded. She looked away and mumbled something that sounded like "I'm sorry."

            Erwin shook his head gravely. "No. No, no-"

            She stopped him with a hard embrace. Red hair fanned over his chest.

           

*

 

_Erwin couldn't recognize a word of what left everyone's mouths in those first dreams. But he soon deciphered commands. Stand. Retreat. Engage. Then, longer thoughts. Have a good evening. Have that report on my desk. I'm sorry for your loss. Eventually, even names. Maria. Mitras. Mike._

_Farlan. Isabel._

_He learned enough to read. The dreams often repeated and had no chronological order.  He watched himself write Farlan's name and Isabel's on a letter that started with "It is with great regret-" and ended with "My deepest sympathies," again and again and again._

 

*

 

            Isabel withdrew. She was quiet for a moment, nails digging into her palms.

            "I still. I still want to-"

            "I know," Erwin said. "And you can."

            "But I'll lose it out there. Like now."

            "I wouldn't put you on a vanguard team. Not so soon. But if you want to come back-"

            "I wanna come back," Isabel confirmed, and balled her fists.

            "-we will find a place for you," he said, and added jokingly, "I can only take so many messages from Farlan trying to convince me to put you back in."

            "It's not fair..."

            "No. It's not. But he found another role. His own. We all need to made do with what we have. And Farlan - he did that and more."

            Isabel nodded. Then, slowly, that same sly smile made its return.  

            "I know you stuck around to trick me into spilling the beans on the boss," she said. "But it was fun. Thanks." She chewed on her lip and slipped a few tightly folded pages from her back pocket.

            "Hange's been drawing a buncha stuff," she said, and handed them to Erwin, "Cool-lookin', but it looks almost like-"

            "A language," Erwin said, grip tightening on the pages. He searched desperately for familiar symbols, for the words and phrases and names he had been deciphering for months. They were nothing alike.

            "Ha, weird, yeah? 'S all I know, boss. Science Boss is a 'lil too quiet, too heavy into that machine."

            "Any idea what it's about?"

            "Nah. Big, big ol' thing though, like a weird door or whatever. Lotta rumblin' about stars and junk too. We going to the moon or something?"

            "Not....to my knowledge," Erwin said. He flipped through the pages. Every inch, every corner was filled with sweeping symbols and the occasional English counterpart in brackets. As Isabel resumed her duties, he lifted the page to the nearest pot. He matched the drawing with the carvings letter by letter.

 

            Erwin was deep into translating the text some days later when he received word from Moblit. It was done. Erwin arrived at the security division within the hour. The film didn't leave the walls of the single reinforced studio where Moblit had stitched it together, had given life to the proverbial monster with the parts Erwin had handpicked.

            The commander made corrections as he reviewed the film. A shorter pan here. A longer establishing shot there. As the minutes passed, his pen moved less and less until it lay forgotten. The light from the wall-mounted screen played on the metal clip. Though every operative's identity was obscured by hat and mask and helmet, he knew, perhaps faster than he would have known his own image, who among them was Levi.

            He knew because when Levi swung the black blades, the weapon did not start at the tip nor end at the hilt. The blades were not the weapon at all. It was Levi. It had always been Levi. He operated with severe efficiency. His limbs possessed a heightened sinuity, and his movements, a predatory magnetism. He was languid and small until he was everywhere and nowhere.  

            When ordered to hold the line, he gave him seas of blistering steam. When ordered to infiltrate a network affiliate's distribution partner, he gave him the network. When ordered to secure a helicopter, he gave him a fleet. He gave, and Erwin took.

            After his role in subduing the Trinidad incursion, word flew through Corps channels.  By morning, every operative in the world knew his name.

 

_*_

_"You give them hope."_

_Levi said nothing to that. There was precious little one could say of the title "Humanity's Strongest". Fingers drummed on his desk. Erwin looked up from the condolence letters. Bands of light lit the wings on his back._

_"We have couriers," Erwin said to the unspoken request._

_Levi drummed in answer, fingers swollen and red._

_"I will not let a subordinate suffer the consequences of my orders."_

_They drummed, scrubbed red and raw and_ _freed of dried blood beneath nail. Freed of the last contact he will ever have with his men._

*

 

            He watched the film cut to a shot of Levi slamming his bike into a cluster of titans.

            Bringing him on the division survey had been critical, but not for footage alone. The Survey Corps' international divisions were necessary to engage as quickly as possible with global titan sightings, but it splintered their unity. They could not hope to be as internationally unified as the CIA or the equally centralized Intermipol headquarters in Munich. There had never been an international campaign of the breadth Erwin designed in all its history. What he needed before public support was that of the Survey Corps itself.

            Erwin had seen the faces, heard the whispers. He had ordered Levi to greet division chiefs, and Levi gave him the world.

 

*

 

             _Levi knew the language of galas well enough without instruction. He had slipped into his fair share before he joined the Corps, acting the servant in one or the nobleman's son in the other while Isabel  and Farlan raided the kitchens and snatched pastries out of nobles' mouths._

_Erwin fattened the crowd with praises and promises until he felt a palpable absence. He passed a chandelier that might have been worth a year's rations and came to a balcony._

_His heels clicked on the marble floor. Levi's elbows rested on the balustrade. Its ornate patterns knit elaborate shadows into Levi's dress shirt and vest. His jacket was folded over one arm. His head fell into his hands, lashes pressed against a palm._

_"Always wanted to know the legal precedents for Madam Rosewater's knitting empire," Levi mumbled._

_Erwin's hand rose as he approached and trailed small comforts on his nape._

*

 

            One would get a better reaction from a member of the Survey Corps by branding their tongue with scalding iron than touching their bare nape. To most, it was a disturbing reaction, that sympathetic response. For every nape they cut, their bodies seemed to wire another thousand nerve endings into theirs to guard the very stretch of skin they train for years to pierce and slice. Agents dream as often of being slain themselves than of being eaten. When his counterpart began to lay an innocent hand on Levi's nape and the other didn't jump or move or blink at the contact, Erwin knew that something had truly been transgressed. He saw the cracks in their walls before they knew they had raised them.

            Erwin's vision swam. He rubbed his eyes as his own voice-over echoed in his ears, one he had designed to the register of each individual syllable, to each intake of breath. It had been days since he had started reviewing the footage. Days since it had been completed. Days since they had begun distribution. Yet he returned to find Levi in the sea of masked figures again and again, to find his own small comfort between the rigor of arranging the film's drop.

            The screen cut to black. Warning text blinked in livid letters:

             _Security Chief M. Zakarius requesting entry._

            Erwin unlocked the studio. Mike walked in and wordlessly dropped a report on his desk. He crossed his arms and waited. Erwin drew it towards him. It was Mike's psych eval.

            He began turning the page when Mike said, "I'll save you the suspense. It's perfect."

            Before Erwin could reply, Mike said with the same unnerving calm, "It's perfect because I lied. I lied on paper. I lied to the shrink. And just now, I lied to you. Must be a hell of an exposé if you neglected to spring this eval through proper channels."

            "You have me at a disadv-"   

            "Don't. Need a list? No prior notice. No schedule timeline. No consensus. No signatures. You strong-armed this thing on everyone when you didn't have to. Why?"       

            Erwin frowned deeply. "We can't hold a committee meeting on every little thing - we're on a deadline," he said, gesturing to the screen. "Saving even a second- Mike?"

            Mike's jaw worked. He was the picture of simmering tension.

            "Mike-"

            "Did Nanaba tell you to do it?"

            Erwin said nothing. Mike monopolized his silence to clarify: "Did she propose or recommend this eval?"

            Mike had seen right through them.

            "A Corps-wide psychological evaluation after a global survey of that length is hardly unheard of-" Erwin began, hating the forced diversion as he spoke it, but needing the precious seconds to think. He had underestimated him, overestimated her. His sentence was to betray one or lie to the other.

            No. There was another way.

            Mike scowled at the obvious deflection. "If you think-"

            "-wouldn't you say so, deputy?"

            Mike froze. He swallowed thickly. His breathing quickened.

            "How?" He mouthed.

            "You accidentally called me sheriff once," Erwin said, lips quirking at the memory. "Might have been in Minsk. Remember?"

            Mike shut his eyes fiercely and drew his mouth into a hard line.

            "Thought it was odd and that was that," Erwin said. "But you said it again a while later. In your sleep. Then I heard more and more and..." He trailed off.

            "How long?" Mike finally asked. He studied the wood grain in the desk. "How long'd you know?"

            "Long."

            Mike nodded. "And how long were you planning on keeping this as your trump card?"

            Erwin opened his mouth to speak before Mike waved him off and said "Forget it, doesn't matter. Secret's out. I'll siphon my duties off, make sure my leave doesn't jar Corps operations-"

            "Wait-"

            "It's my fault for dragging this out. I knew I had to be let go, put down, but I thought I could-"     

            Erwin rose. "'Put down'? Do you hear yourself? You're not a mutt."

            "Aren't I?"

            "Stop," Erwin scowled, offended on his behalf.

            "I'm unfit for duty and you know it. I can't eat. I can't sleep. Every night's a date with another desert, another hijacked train, another territorial dispute like I'm Clint fucking Eastwood, but," he added scathingly, "at least I can tell what the waitress across the river had for lunch last week."

            "You can also tell a spy from a veteran agent."

            "We don't even know for sure."

            "Your intuition has never let us down before."

            "And I won't start now. I won't jeopardize my men. I won't jeopardize you."

            Erwin could only shake his head in answer. In his infinite self absorption, he hadn't questioned for a moment that Mike might react less kindly to his dreams. That his dreams might have been less kind to him.

            "I'm going to help you catch these bastard spooks. Least I could do. Then I'm gonna resign."

            "No."

            "Erwin-"

           Paid leave, if Mike requested it, was no issue. But not resignation. Never that. "I shouldn't have kept this from you," Erwin said. "And for so long-"

            "Forget it. I should have told you sooner-"

            "No, it's not that," Erwin said, the words he had practiced for so long now scattered and lifeless on his tongue.  But he had to voice them. He had to say it.

            "I also dr-"

            A frantic ring erupted from Mike's phone.  He took it, listened for a moment, then gestured to the screen and held up two fingers. Erwin flipped to that channel as Mike turned to calm the frantic voice on the line. Erwin looked to the screen. A solemn-faced reporter stood in front of a tower as sirens painted her red and blue.

            "-don't know who could have been behind this," she reported. "At the moment, it is unclear where the blast originated or who set it off but-"

            Mike shut his phone. "Rogue EMP in the Panacea building, ten minutes ago. Knocked out electronics for blocks."

            "Panacea?"

            "Medtech company. Iaso affiliate. Normally this wouldn't concern us, but Farlan might have found something." Mike put Farlan on speaker.

            "We can hear you, go ahead," Mike said.

            "Commander," Farlan started, "When we install sensors for Firefly Project, they sometimes are uh knocked out or accidentally confiscated. No big deal, yeah? But two times we stick them on Panacea, and twice, they all stolen or busted. This is third time. Could be coincidence, but-"

            "How long will it take to reinstall them?" Erwin asked.

            "Two to four hours. Depends on resources."

            Erwin addressed Farlan and Mike. "I want all non-essential security operations suspended until those sensors are reinstalled and back online."

            "Y-yes, commander," Farlan said as Mike's brows fell. He ended the call.

            Erwin threw on a jacket and pulled up a global Survey Corps operations report.

            "Good," Erwin muttered, eyes flying over the numbers. "I want every able Survey Corps branch in the tri-state stationed within ten miles of Panacea. That's Trenton, Hartford and Bridgeport. And get those reporters out of there."

            "A move like that and Intermipol will be on us by morning. We don't even have evidence this pulse has anything to with radicals or titans, and Project Firefly's not an approved program," Mike said. "How are we gonna justify this kind of response?"

            "We'll worry about that in the morning."

            "You never stick your neck out like this for a hunch. There's something else," Mike said, eyes narrowed, "You know something."

            Erwin nodded grimly, and double checked the studio's security console before speaking. "Our Iaso agent was doing more than fundraising. She confirmed that Intermipol's most generous donor does business with pro-titan radicals."

            Mike went slack-jawed. "And you're just sitting on this?"

            "Point fingers too soon and the papers will bury it as quickly as they'll spin that the Survey Corps is conducting illegal espionage. We'll be tried and dissolved within the week. We need to corner them, box them, and tight," he said, and added with a small smile, "No room to spin."

            "The film," Mike realized.

            "Right. If whatever we find in Panacea implicates Iaso further, our confrontation with Intermipol could tip in our favor. Nan's ground teams will cover the streets on bikes. Nanaba, Levi, you and I will command a chopper each along with a small regiment. They'll monitor each cardinal face of the tower."

            Mike frowned. "Wasn't two plenty when we did this in Johannesburg?"

            "A rogue EMP set off in an Iaso affiliate's headquarters, stolen sensors - no. We're going in blind. I'll also take one half of your third years. You'll take the other. I have an idea."

            Mike looked as if he had misheard. When no punch line came, he groaned and rubbed his eyes. "I'll take 'em all," he grumbled.

            "Fourteen won't f-"

            "Narrowed 'em to five this morning."

            Erwin's eyes widened. "Five?"

            "Yes. And if you'll just wait, I can probably-"

            "No, we can't afford to wait. We can't rule out that they have a hand in this either. This will be faster."

            "And knowing you, riskier."

            "Mike-"

            "Fine. I'll have my men slip trackers on their equipment. If they bail, we'll know."

            "Good. And Mike?"

            "Yeah?"

            "There's no guarantee our lines will be secure on location, so I'll say this now," Erwin started, made sure that Mike was listening intently, and said slowly, meaningfully:

            "If I tell you, verbatim,  _'I need immediate evac'_  on a  _private_  line -  _do not. Follow. That order_. Make a show of there being interference, static, anything. Do you understand?"   

            "But that's-"

            " _Do you understand?_ "

            Mike deliberated. Erwin watched it play on his face. Finally, he nodded.

            "Good. And good work," Erwin said. Mike nodded tersely and the two made their way out. Erwin buried his resentment for the ill-timed news, and buried deeper his relief. After this was over, he will tell him. He'll tell Mike he had been dreaming as long as he. That he dreamt of giants and walls. He will tell him that he should have trusted his oldest friend.

            By the time they were in the air, the reporters had been scattered, and Farlan's men began scaling Panacea. Erwin tore through their data on the structure on an interior console and gripped a leather support strap to steady himself against the buck and sway of the aircraft. Major internal renovation in the 2080's. Official affiliation with Iaso declared in 2085. Prioritized genetics research. As he pulled up a structural blueprint of the tower, his earpiece pinged.

            "Headcams online," Farlan reported. He observed the operation from base using a network of custom auditory and tactile equipment of his own design. They were his eyes and ears. "Switch to remote view interface on console to see."

            Erwin did so and roamed over a screen split sixteen ways. The sickly green night vision cameras and glasses were unavoidable. They didn't need sixteen headlights to broadcast their flagrant trespassing for miles around. The climbers glanced down every so often and reminded their audience of their incredible height.

            "Church," drawled a familiar voice over the comm, "I know the adhesives on their precious gloves and slippers would keep their asses glued to that glass in a hurricane, but tell them not to push it. If I wanted a show, I'd go to a circus."

            "Afraid of heights, Levi?" Nanaba teased.

            "Not likely," Mike said. "Should've seen him fly in Johannesburg."

            "Ah well. Hey," Nanaba said, "Where's Hange disappeared to?"

            "Sabbatical," Mike answered as Levi said, "Snoring."

            "Enough," Erwin said, and the chatter stopped.

            Erwin swayed and watched the agents install one sensor after another. The craft shuddered.

            A chorus of sharp breaths filled his ears as an agent dangled from one hand. He had misjudged his grip.           

            "Tch. Call Cirque du Soleil," Levi muttered. "Where are the nets? We -ad t--m last t-me." The feed crackled. The agent readjusted himself and moved on.

            "En route. Trenton team has them," Erwin said. Installing nets against neighboring buildings to catch falling agents was a logistical ordeal, but it was either that or the cold kiss of pavement. Levi had insisted on paying for them and any damages involved in securing them to private property himself.

            Erwin turned from the live feed to the burgeoning three dimensional map of the tower on the console strapped to his wrist as the sensors came online. Something was odd.

            "Farlan, how accurate are these sensors?"

            "They are calibrated to detect average human thermal and infrared radiation and higher. So far, our climbers are mostly successful in bypassing the glass. When building was evacuated, some ran off without shutting windows. Slipping them inside is no problem. They cover four, five meters, commander."

            "I see."

            "You want the sensors deeper inside?" Mike guessed.

            "Absolutely not," Nanaba said. "We're trespassing on a crime scene as it is. They called the EMP a terrorist act. Cops and Feds are all in there-" 

            "Are they?" Erwin asked.

            The comm was silenced. Slowly, the disbelieving noises rolled in. There hadn't been a single dot of light within the tower since their arrival. Federal agents would have long since brought generators. Flashlights, at the least. And unless they harbored an inexplicable fear of windows, the blanket lack of activity picked up by the sensors four to five meters from the windows wired their nerves hot.

            "Intermipol must have ordered the local precincts to stay clear," Mike offered.

            "On what grounds?" Nanaba said. "And if they did, they should have dropped us a line. Shit, what are we saying? Intermipol shouldn't even know we're here."

            "Four choppers?" Mike said. "Half the city knows we're here."

            Levi made a disgusted noise. "I don't stick my ass out for cheap shit - these things run quieter than this conversation. We're halfway to the moon and our lights are cut. _We're invisible_."

            "Commander?" Nanaba deferred.

            A savage wind curled up and rattled Erwin's chopper. The first fat drops of rain pounded on the hull. The climbers visibly hastened.

            "All helidisc fliers are to secure their harnesses immediately." Erwin ordered. A shock of activity rippled through the choppers.

            Each flier confirmed the order from their respective aircraft. Four agents accompanying the commander - Hange's research assistants - leapt up at once to assist a fifth in securing her own.

            It was the second time he would see the new equipment on an operation, let alone the innumerable times he had observed the training of their first four fliers, yet the feeling returned each time - a dreadful awe tightening in his chest.

            There was no way around the necessity of engaging with titans vertically in a time when cities were more populous than ever in humanity's history. Intermipol consistently shut down the ideas of Corps engineers with increasingly petty justifications. Titan incursions within city limits rarely reached extravagant heights, they argued, and should a creature begin scaling a building, opening fire on their limbs until it falls to executable range was all the standard procedure they needed.           

            The strategy relied on many assumptions. The titan would not climb too fast. It would not climb too far.  The building was properly evacuated. The streets likewise. There was enough personnel to stage the drop. Enough firepower. Enough time. The International Military Police needed only to tighten the purse's drawstrings for the matter to be grudgingly shelved.

            Until titans began growing taller, running faster, striking harder.

            Until Erwin began to dream.

            The 3DMG could not be replicated entirely. A core function - the anchors - was deeply unreliable, an inevitability of the technological disparity between the two realities. Even if they could be cast in the hardest metal, the force needed to consistently pierce concrete and steel was unsustainable. There had to be another way.

            Lodged into the underside of each chopper was a two-meter-wide helidrone disc. Each armored disc could support two and a half men without compromising its extraordinarily maneuverability, and a far more compact gas output system remained attached to the fliers' waists and to the small of their backs for tighter movement.

            Engineering the equipment in secret had been a debilitating investment. Erwin and his top officers fielded the cost out of their own paychecks. He only regretted that Nanaba forbid their accountant from taking it all from his.

            The harness also retained few of the characteristic 3DMG straps as a different source of propulsion required a modified support system, yet seeing the reminiscent curve of dark leather still plunged Erwin into a visceral nostalgia. He might have scoffed before at the idea of thinking fondly of the dreams, but he hadn't watched his men don a functional 3DMG variant before either. 

            Like self-aware marionettes, they hurtle through cities on wires, tapping orders to their metal wing into consoles molded into their palms and wrists - or to the handles of their blades, if their role was a combative one - as they slip through alleyways, under bridges, over spires. The titan they had cut down on their maiden flight in downtown Johannesburg had nearly dissolved when it hit the earth.

            The climbers reached the twentieth story. Levi complained about the missing nets every so often, but the comm was otherwise quiet. All four monitored their progress. The heat map showed no activity.

            Erwin imagined what progress they could make if they mined not only his own dreams for ideas, but them all. 

            Midnight bled into the stillness of the early hours. Panacea loomed black against the hazy dome of light hovering over the city. Climber fifteen sneezed. The heat map showed no activity.

            He wondered what phantasms visited them in their visions, what horrors. What marvels.

            Someone in his cabin started tapping their foot. No melody, no tune. Only bursts of nervous energy. Another joined in soon after. Rain drizzled for a moment, then lashed the hull in heavy sheets, then quieted again. Climber eight waved cheekily at the choppers from below. The heat map showed no activity.

            When the operation concluded, he would gather them as he should have done months ago. No one should have suffered this in silence.

            The two from Erwin's research detail were tapping holes into the floor. He had half a mind to offer them a drink. A murmur rose over Mike's comm for a moment, then died down. The heat map showed no activity.

            Camera four plunged into static. Five followed. Six started to hiccup.

            The heat map showed activity.

            "Farlan," Erwin demanded, "what am I looking at?"

            "H--d o- t-is int-er-f----ce-"

            "Shit," Levi swore.

            "Hello?" Farlan returned. "Hello??"

            "We read you," Erwin confirmed. "Report."

            "No idea what is beh-nd interference, but there was reading just n-w on No---east side, twenty-first  fl--r. Too faint to-"

            The agent on camera six secured a grip on the glass with one hand. Twin pinpricks of light flashed in the camera's periphery. Erwin's skin crawled.

            " _Patch me to six NOW_ ," Erwin ordered.

            "Wh- I-"

            " _HE NEEDS TO MO-._ "

            The window shattered. A slavering maw burst out of a rupturing halo of jagged shards. The agent's head split like an overripe melon and the lens blackened, slicked with gore. It slid into a cavernous gullet. The feed cut.

            " _Черт_  -" Levi swore.

            Another pane burst. Then a third. A fourth.  They punctured the tower like maggots on a rotting carcass. They snapped at the prey that disturbed their wretched hive. The comm was silenced for a small eternity.

            "Fo-r on the northeast side," Mike yelled first.

            "Two- no, four - s--theast," Nanaba reported.

            "Three m-therfuckers nor--west," Levi said through gritted teeth.

            "Five southwest," Erwin reported.

            "Fliers Sing, Jones, Abrams - I want  _every_  agent off that building. Do not engage with the titans. I repeat,  _do not engage_ ," Erwin ordered.

            His own flier, Jones, tapped furiously into her palms. Erwin's aircraft jolted as the disc dislodged from its belly and hovered to the chopper's side.

            "Ground teams are to form three-tiered perimeters," Erwin directed, one order following the other in rapid succession. "Close all subway entrances and designate a security detail to each station."

            They had seen titans in cities before. They might have even been denser, larger, more vulnerable than theirs. But this city was theirs. This home was theirs. This infestation had been growing under their noses.

            Erwin switched to a public channel. "Attention," he addressed to every agent in the city, "An incursion is underway." He delivered general orders and coordinates and roused all reserve personnel before ordering an immediate shipment of heavy weaponry to their location.

            Jones pried the aircraft door open. A damp draft swept into the cabin. She bounced on her heels.

            "Carry one at a time and no more. Don't wait for your disc to overheat beyond repair - land and let it cool," Erwin directed the fliers. Jones confirmed the order and yanked on the wires secured to her waist and back to confirm their integrity, then gave a tug the opposite way to confirm their connection to the waiting helidisc. She teetered. She fell. The wires snapped taut, and she flew.

            " _Let me fly_." Levi demanded on a private channel.

            "Not yet."

            Ground teams draped the tower in floodlights. All choppers descended and tracked the beasts with high-beam searchlights and chopper-mounted cameras. An evacuation order was issued for the surrounding city blocks. Sirens pierced the air. It was long past time for discretion.

            The fliers ducked under grasping fingers and snapping teeth and plucked the terrified agents from their posts to set them down on the nearest terrace or balcony before returning for more.

            Strong winds buffeted through the cabin. Erwin switched on the areal camera and moved to shut the door. His hand stilled on the handle. Yet another titan punctured through the infested tower beside a stranded climber. The agent chose concrete over teeth.

            Erwin's knuckles paled as he watched the falling agent. Blood pounded in his ears.

            "-omma--er?" Mike called through the crackling comm. "Erwin, c-me in, Comma-"

            "Speaking. Report."

            "Eight de-d. Three s-fe, three in th- air. Two s-ill stranded."

            "Targets?"

            "Dangling. Few crawled back ins--e, one dropped and terminated. Th-y just-" Mike added with disgusted disbelief, "they just k--p coming."

            "Containment," Nanaba demanded, "What are we d--ng about cont--nme-t?"

            "There's a massive vertical structure running through the center of the tower with access points on every fifth story," Erwin said, recalling the tower's internal blueprints, "If we assume they're spilling out of there-"

            "Dropping nuke is out, yeah?"

            "Levi!" Nanaba gasped.

            "Just checking."

            Erwin watched glass continue to ripple and shatter. Inhuman howls pierced the frenzied air. It rattled their bones. The sensor map was an angry mass of livid, pulsating red. The night would not end soon.

            "A nuke..." Erwin muttered.

            "N-t funny, Smi-h," Nanaba said.

            "No, but something a little smaller. A controlled demolition."

            "There's evid--ce in there," Mike warned.

            "There's --ople out here," Levi bit back.

            "Grates, then."

            "Grates?" Levi scoffed.

            "Look at the tower," Erwin said. With the last of the climbers gone, the titans swayed and fanned out in lazy patterns. A few simply sat on a blown open ledge and dangled their mottled legs.

            "The climbers were too close. They drew them out. Look at them - nearly a hundred agents are stationed below, but the titans aren't reacting. The odor density here must overwhelm them-"

            "No kidding," Mike muttered.

            "We can cage them. Cage the tower in grating."

            "Steel grating's the only thing that's strong enough long term," Nanaba said. "But it'll take a while to install, chief."

            "Two layers, then," Erwin said. "A lightweight material we can slip on first, and quickly. It'll buy us enough time to add a second, harder layer - steel or titanium - and keep them locked in for good."

            "With what army-" Nanaba started. "Wait. Wait, no-"

            "Mike, contact Defense Secretary Dot Pixis."

            "There has to be another way-" Nanaba started.

            "We ping Pixis and this bec-mes a war zone," Mike warned. "There'll be no chance of covering this up t-"

            "Is that Intermipol's opinion or yours, Zakarius?" Erwin asked darkly.

            There was a snicker over the line that might have been Levi's.

            "Are we secure, Security chief?" Erwin asked more diplomatically.

            "Yes, co--ander," Mike confirmed curtly. "I'll brief -im."     

            " _Fuck_."

            "Levi?" Nanaba said.

            "Congratulations to our non-American agents," Levi said with unsettling awe. "We can officially switch to meters as unit of meas--ement."

            Erwin toggled the camera mounted on Levi's chopper in the northwest quadrant. His blood chilled.

            It squeezed out of a busted pane on the fifty-third story. A flurry of gasps and muttered prayers erupted from Erwin's onboard detail as they watched through a window. Every agent on the ground pointed at the beast.

            "Han-" Erwin stopped himself. He was so accustomed to receiving measurements from Hange. He ordered it from Farlan and his team as the creature hoisted itself two stories higher with a single upward stride. It didn't fit within the camera frame.

            "He's right," Farlan said shakily, breath coming fast. "Sixteen and half feet. F-five meters."

            A blade of grass sprouted in the cabin. Erwin squeezed his eyes shut.

            Not now. It cannot happen now.

            His right arm jerked as if shocked. He opened his eyes and the cabin was nearly carpeted. The walls splintered apart as if they were more bark than metal. Erwin's breathing deepened as if he were plunging into a cavernous sleep, even as his every limb remained charged from the hunt. He was ascending. He was falling. He was grounded. He was flying. He was in one world and the next. He was in neither. He was in both.

            The moon crumbled. It was close now. Erwin watched the sprawling city through the splintering holes in the hull, eyes catching on the Hudson as it spilled from bay to ocean. He was sure his heart would bruise his ribs with the force of his desire to break the encroaching vision.

            A clutch of grass withered away. Erwin watched the blades shudder and crumble.  The earth beneath it gave way to a familiar riveted steel. He turned to the river again, but only a pitiful swathe of grass wilted at the gesture. It was not enough.

            He couldn't act blindly. He needed to think.

            Distant voices rumbled in his ear. The chopper was nearly dissolved. Panacea was more wood than steel. He was running out of time.

            Erwin pulled the door open. He was soaked immediately, but he had to move fast. Midtown was already green, its towers warping into great oaks. A river had slowed the vision a moment ago, he thought furiously, its mouth open wide into the waiting ocean.     

            Something else had stopped it the first time. Now, a river plunging into an ocean. Before, a vanishing scar. No.

            A contradiction.

            "Levi," he said on a private line, gathering his composure and rolling the words a last time in his head to confirm the pronunciation: "Мне нужен отчет."  _I need a report._

There was no greater one than that.

            The oaks began splintering. They even toppled. His heart pounded as the rain returned and the sky darkened. His mind strained at the whiplash of concrete spilling back over grass, of trunks splitting, impaled by rising spires. It was working. Whatever cosmic joke he was made to suffer, he would tame it.

            "Все также," Levi reported suspiciously. "Aнглийский забыл?"  _No change. Forgot English?_

            Erwin shut his eyes against reality's violent shudder. He was outside of himself. Outside of time. Walls crumbled over his head, beneath his feet, inside his skull. Leather straps that had tightened across his chest and torso unfurled in a smoky wisp. He inhaled sharply, as if he had forgotten to breathe. As if he had surfaced from a still lake.

            "Блять," Levi swore knowingly. "Я сейчас пре-"  _Fuck. I'll come to you-_

            "No. Maintain your position," Erwin said, and shut the door. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and his bloodless hands shook but they were his hands, his sweat, his rattling chopper, and however wretched at the moment, his reality. A cursory glance at his watch confirmed the ordeal had stolen barely ten seconds. They were ten too much. He carded a hand through his soaked hair.

            "I heard th-t fucking noise," Levi said through gritted teeth, "I  _know_  that n-ise, you're-"

            "That's enough."

            "Вот как это остановить , старик. Я тогда также кричал т-бе по русски. Не притворяйся - я знаю что это б-ло, Смит."  _That's what stops it, old man. I yelled in Russian then, too. Stuff your pretense - I know what that was, Smith._

"Good. You'll know what to do if it happens again."

            "You can't just-"

            Erwin switched to a public channel. A few heads rose from his research detail. They jolted back to their duties as Erwin turned his head.

            The commander directed ground troops toward falling titans while avoiding another direct glance at the five meter. He had never found a titan under five meters in the dreams.

            That was their trigger, then - coincidence. And contradiction, their panacea.

            A low laugh rumbled in his chest. Whoever orchestrated this incursion did not choose the Panacea tower by accident. Panacea. A cure. The all-cure.

           Crawling from the tower's gut was the radical's cure. The pro-titan radicals' answer to humanity. Despite its perversion, he could acknowledge a clever marriage of concept and execution when he saw one. Selfishly, he hoped to live long enough to meet its maker.

            "Pixis gave us the green," Mike reported, and struck him out of his thoughts. "National Guard troops are en route. ETA fift--n minutes. Gr-tes in twenty. Just gotta h-ld our position. And Erwin?"

            "Go on."

            "He insisted you accept his invitat--ns to his nephew's fundr-iser, his son's wedding, and the Se--etary of State's aunt's h-sband in law's cousin's birthday party."

            "Excellent timing."

            Erwin ordered a retreat to their fliers to let their helidiscs cool. For all its advantages, the disc overheated far too quickly. A more efficient radiator diminished its speed and weight capacity. They had to move wisely.

            Titans emerged, clambered about and squeezed back inside at regular intervals as the Survey Corps held their perilous position. Too close, and they tempted the horde.  Too far, and the more ambitious of the creatures had a greater chance of outmaneuvering their agents in the slick, darkened streets should it slip and fall.

            An hour and many corpses into the balancing act, Mike received a report.

            "Ground and med sq--ds from Divisions Bridgeport, Hartford and Tr-nton are being detained," he said.

            "They forg-t their fucking IDs on the -itchen counter?" Levi snapped.

            "They got 'em but some- hold on." Mike switched out of the comm.

            "This can't be Intermipol..." Nanaba said.

            Mike returned. "It's Intermipol."

            Levi swore so elaborately that Erwin couldn't keep up.

            "Mike," Erwin said, "any word from the National Guard?"

            "Ten minutes."           

            A bone rattling shriek pierced the air and registered so loudly on the comm that Erwin hissed and yanked off his earpiece. He looked away from the video feed as the five meter grappled across ledges and beams to his side of the tower. The creature howled at his chopper. He didn't have to look to know the bloodshot eyes, the snapping teeth.

            He readjusted his earpiece as Levi drawled an "He likes you."

            "Finally," Nanaba said. "The boys are here. Fashi--ably late, too."

            Headlights from half a dozen armored trucks lit the streets several blocks away. Transport choppers hauling the first layers of grating followed in the air. Erwin contacted the approaching commanders and relayed a litany of contingency operations and order formations. This was going to be done once, and it was going to be done right.

            "Commander," Nanaba said, "I know we go-ta get that grating on, but we can't shoot the bastards down all at once."

            "What are you thinking, Nan?"

            "I'm thinking we're d-wn thirty to forty percent down th-re just chasing after the jumpers. We can bust ass on the short range but not when we're stret--ed so thin. The boys with the big guns'll give us cover fire from long, but the second a big one breaks through the line, they're screwed. They d-n't know the first th--g about titan slaying. --cking,  _fucking_  Intermipol," she snarled, "we  _needed_  --rtford and Trenton-"

            "As much as I love sitting pretty, Smith, I do h-ve other uses ," Levi suggested, and punctuated the remark with a harsh snap of his harness.

            "You're our only flier with combat prowess. We can't-" Erwin stopped.

            There was another way to clear the way for the grating.

            "Levi," Erwin began carefully, "if we can line them up for you, can you finish the job before needing cooldown?"

            "Line th-" Mike and Nanaba repeated at once, one more scandalized than the other.

            "Yes," Levi said simply.

            Erwin nodded. "Sing, Jones, Abrams - Cooldown report."

            "35 percent."

            "78."

            "66, commander."

            "Sing and Abrams will take northwest and northeast. Jones, alternate southwest and southeast. You are to lure the clinging targets within your assigned territory to the roof. Attach the red signal lights to yourselves and your discs to communicate your positions with ground troops - we don't want friendly fire. They'll suppress emerging titans.  Zakarius will monitor Sing and Abrams. Levi will guide Jones. Do not engage directly. And Sing - I did say one at a time."

            Erwin received a chorus of 'Yes, sir' and a solitary "Sorry, sir" and contacted the approaching transport helicopters with coordinates and standby orders, followed by an order to the Guard troops on the ground to be mindful of their airborne agents and fire only on emerging titans - not those already on the tower surface, and to leave fallen titans for Survey Corps agents to clean up. He assigned Nanaba to command the troops below as Erwin directed the grating installation above.

            "Mike - land on an adjacent tower with your team and encourage the targets to stay on the roof. Time your shots."

            "Got it."

            “All units are to assume their positions and stand by," Erwin announced. Every scar in his flesh stung as if split anew. The flush of coming violence burned hot beneath his skin.

            He was easing into a truer body, a greater self. He slipped into the Survey Corps like a spirit joining its corporeal self. He moved its limbs because they were his. He hissed when they bled because their wounds were his. Its heartbeat pounded in his veins. His orders raced through its mind. He was king and blade and the single taut thread between the untamed rush of life and rule and the kind certainty of the void.

            He slid open the chopper doors, flare gun heavy in his palm. He raised it. He fired. A dense green plume rippled into the sky.

            Sing, Abrams and Jones dove. They skirted the glass and taunted the dangling titans with shallow nicks and kicks to the head. The beasts snapped at their heels and gave chase as a massive bout of howling announced a fresh wave of titans from their glass nest, their numbers swarming faster than they could be counted.

            Levi and Mike rerouted the airborne agents as the din of erupting suppression fire drilled holes into Erwin's head. Bikes roared as titans clambered over one another on their way up and fell to the waiting blades below. Erwin coordinated the grating installation and announced their progress.

            Ten percent _._

            The night was a tightly controlled chaos. One by one, the grating was unfurled five stories at a time and secured by skittish attachment personnel dangling from the transport choppers by ropes and pulleys and at the mercy of titan and time and wind. Inhuman shrieking married the din of rifle fire. Blood that wouldn't evaporate streamed down the tower. It ran through the streets. Medical teams raced after broken corpses.

Twenty percent _._

            A titan knocked Sing into an uncontrolled dive. Mike bellowed a ceasefire on the Northwest face to prevent friendly fire. Sing plummeted, wires tangled and disc wobbling. Titans burst through the glass unhindered at the lull in gunfire.

             " _Let me fly_ ," Levi demanded.

            "Not yet."

            Nanaba ordered a retreat to the Corps ground teams below. Their numbers were down fifty percent. Abrams herded a group of titans onto the roof and tore down the length of the tower with desperate intent.

            "Cool it, Abrams, or you'll overheat," Mike ordered. "It's too late."

            The window had closed on Sing's chance to pull up. They could only watch.

            Sing's body met pavement with a miserable crunch. But the disc didn't follow. Instead, it rose, having been unfastened mid-dive, and hurtled toward an alarmed Abrams in a sharp backward turn.

            "Sing, you wonderful bastard," Mike muttered, then roared at Abrams, "Override it! Code 3GU54, Code 3GU54 - bring her home!"

            Abrams pounded the code into her wrists and caught the veering disc as if with an invisible lasso. She hooked it with a spare wire and pulled it to the ground under cover fire before resuming her post.

            Levi breathed harshly in between rerouting Jones.

            The theory had been Erwin's. The design was the engineers'. But it was Levi who flew. He who trained himself, who had trained these first three. There were none like them in the world, and they had just become one fewer.

            Thirty percent.

            Erwin's voice nearly wavered as he issued commands for the next sheet of grating amid a renewed wave of gunfire. Sing had unfastened the disc and shot it towards Abrams for her to catch. His final order - final thought - had been for the Survey Corps.

            Forty percent.

            Abrams moved with hasty jerks. Mike pulled her from the tower intermittently to let her catch her breath. Jones slithered up and down the opposite sides. With Levi's direction and the Guard's suppression fire, the southern faces were nearly cleared. Erwin redirected the grating crews to take advantage of their progress.

            Sixty percent.

            All seventy-four stories on the southern faces were secured. Erwin and Nanaba rearranged the Corps and Guard troops on the ground to focus fire on  the north. They were three and a half hours into the caging operation. Erwin's voice grew rough from the strain of coordinating the effort.

            Seventy percent.

            The titans jostled on the roof as Mike's team fired potshots at the more brazen of the group. As the surface area for the titans to squeeze out of grew smaller, Abrams and Jones relieved one another in quick succession to allow each other's discs to cool. Their chests rose and fell heavily. They were exhausted.  

            Ninety percent _._

            Jones' form was impeccable, but no amount of prodding and jabbing would entice the five meter to move from its perch. It swatted lazily at the timid Abrams and ducked at Jones' swift kicks.

            "Gun it down?" Mike suggested.

            "And flatten everyone on the ground?" Levi snapped.

            "Stubborn son of a bitch," Nanaba murmured as the titan lolled its great head.

              Jones flitted back and forth. She pinched its toes and kicked its jaw. After a few minutes of this, she extended the length of her wire and stood on its head.

            "No theatrics," Levi warned Jones. "If you start tap dancing on that lazy fuck-"

            A massive hand burst through the glass above and seized Jones by the middle. Panicked shots rang out from the Guard below before Nanaba called a ceasefire. Jones writhed in the grip as it drew her into the building. Her disc gave a powerful backwards jerk and ripped Jones, still in hand, and a titan far more massive than the five meter almost entirely out of its hive.

            "Wake up, Abrams. Break its grip," Levi ordered as horrified noises rippled through the ranks at the size of the second titan. Abrams shot forward, blades drawn. The five meter sniffed, leapt into her path and snapped her in two. Her scream must have carried for miles.

            Abrams' disc clanged against its skull as the five meter swallowed, and having lost its balance with the leap, hurtled to the earth, to the panicked troops below.

            "Levi," Erwin ordered in the precious few seconds before the titan hit the ground, "Roof."

             It burst on impact. Limbs and viscera splattered across every corner of the street. The more skittish of the Guard opened fire indiscriminately. Thick sheets of steam obscured the breakdown of order on the ground. Nanaba's chopper descended to calm the troops.

            "Understood," Levi breathed, and leapt with drawn blades. While the other fliers had soared beneath the disc on wires, Levi attached a stationary plate on its front, shortened his wires to anchor his feet to the disc, and rode it. He flew straight through the corralled titans. Scarlet fountains followed in his wake.

            Erwin tore his eyes from the display and switched to a private channel between himself and his pilot. "Take us in, Mr. Schultz. The last grating is almost-"

            A flurry of ominous clanks echoed through the cabin. "Commander," the pilot said, "fuel tank's been nicked. We have to la-"

            The aircraft veered wildly. A bout of unnerving metallic clangs and whines echoed again.

            "Commander? What's g-ing on up there? -rwin?" Mike's voice cut through the din of warning sirens and flashing emergency lights. Erwin threw on a parachute harness and helped the research detail with theirs before guiding them out of the door one at a time. Through the string of released chutes, Erwin caught waves of steam rising in thick, opaque columns from Panacea's roof. A look at the ground confirmed that Nanaba had brought some measure of order back into the frenzied Guard troops.

            "Mike."

            "Erw-n, what the hell h-ppened?"

            "Take over grate operations."

             With that, Erwin jumped and yanked the ripcord as the helicopter wavered and spun in a barely  controlled descent. It circled an adjacent building and sputtered out of sight.

            The rain had long since abated, but now a vicious wind lashed at his face and hands.

            Something was wrong. He was falling too rapidly. He looked up and found his answer - the bucking chopper must have pierced the parachute fabric.

            He followed the steam. With what remained of his control over the parachute, he maneuvered himself onto Panacea's roof and cut himself from the tangled straps of the useless chute. He rolled to break his fall.

            His earpiece thrummed with a volley of calls. He switched to a private channel as he rose to his feet.

            "Mike-"

            "Thank Christ. What the hell happened-"

            "Do you have visual on the roof?"

            "Nothin' but steam. Where are- I see you. Of all the places- okay. Sit tight. Levi went after a diver. I'll tell him to-"

            "No."

            " _What?_ "

            "Do not contact Levi. Instruct your squad to cease fire and stand by."

            " _The roof is not clear_ -"

            A low rumble slipped through the steam to corroborate Mike's words. Erwin made out a faint outline. A shadow in the hissing columns. A rising growl in a mass grave.

            "We have visual," Mike bellowed. "If you move clockwise around that thing, we can get a clean shot-"

            " _Stand by_."

            Erwin drew a blade, its metallic whine an answer to the gurgling howl. Mike's frustration was palpable, but he needed to trust him.

            The titan - six meters, at least - hobbled out of the steam curtains. Deep cuts to its neck and chest swelled and knitted themselves shut before his eyes. It tilted its head and sniffed. Wind whipped up its dark, wiry hair and threw it over reddened eyes.

            Its skin was clear, so clear Erwin could track each spindly vein in its hands, each winding artery in the column of its neck. Its tongue lolled stupidly, but its eyes - its eyes were not the clouded, grey things the smaller titans bore. They were green. Orange specks dotted its iris. Erwin felt his gut twist. Like a perversion of puberty, the larger they grew, the less-beast like were their teeth, their limbs, their eyes. The larger they grew, the more they were mirrors than beasts.

             It stepped forward once. Twice. Daylight burst through the parting clouds too suddenly to be natural. As Erwin stepped back twice for every step it made forward, he noticed the tower's edge was lined not with metal rails but stone parapets. It was happening again.

            " _Mike_ ," Erwin said, heart pounding in his ears. " _I need immediate evac_."

            Erwin shed his more cumbersome equipment and raised his blade. His right arm nearly blinded him with pain.

            "Come in. C-me in, Commander-" Mike said.

            " _I need immediate evac_ ," Erwin repeated. His right arm lagged noticeably now. He could barely grip the blade.

            "Fuck this interference-" Mike swore.

            The titan howled and leapt forward. Erwin dodged both arms and slashed at its calf. A transport helicopter neared with the last sheet of grating. The attachment personnel visibly wilted and signaled the chopper to stop. It would not approach with the titan so close.

            Erwin slashed at its other calf in its blundering confusion. He was momentarily deafened by the pained howls. Erwin lured it to the opposite end of the roof, feet pounding against cold metal, then hard stone. He ignored the waves of grass below, ignored the sprawling castle grounds. The titan gave chase on hands and knees, yet still it drew too close, too fast.

            A blow to his side knocked Erwin off his feet. His chest burned with exertion, his sides ached from the strike. His hands bled at breaking his violent skid before he flew over the opposite edge.

            The titan pinned his legs and opened its jaw. Erwin stared down the cavernous jaw.

            A shot rang through the air. Titan blood spilled so liberally over him that Erwin knew he would drown if he didn't slip out of its grasp fast. The creature rose and clawed desperately at the stump of its neck, feeling desperately for the head that dangled from frayed tendons.

            Then a roaring hum surfaced behind him, and Erwin could not even turn his head before a vicious blur of steel and titanium and man tore the titan's nape from its back and broke the vision's hold in the same instant. As the beast fell, the disc spun erratically as it flew toward an adjacent building.

            He had too much momentum. Levi slammed through the glass.

            Erwin's calls to him went unanswered. He ordered the last sheet of grating secured and confirmed the end of the first phase of the operation with a leadened tongue. Whoops and cheers from below echoed hollow in his ears.

            After hastily confirming the end of all titan presence - barring the frenzied clawing against the tower's makeshift cage - Erwin placed another call.

            "Isabel-"

            "Let me fly, commander, please!"

            "Retrieve Levi. Fly him right to the medical tents."

            Erwin knew Levi would skin him alive for going behind his back. While Levi trained the three abroad, Erwin recorded the lessons in secret and allowed Isabel to learn on the other side of the Atlantic. It was a dangerous game, fooling him, but as Erwin watched Isabel soar into the hole in the building and carry a battered Levi down to earth, he hoped he might be convinced to forgive.

           Nanaba reported troop positions and operation stats with barely contained relief. Jones had ripped out of the titan's grip and returned with a shallow nick or two from friendly fire. Erwin ordered an immediate shipment of the second grating layer and boarded Nanaba's waiting chopper to descend.

            As the first sheets of steel grating arrived, Mike joined Erwin on the blockaded streets and looked ready to throw a punch and embrace him at once. Erwin decided for him.

            As they parted, he slipped a hastily written note into Mike's jacket.

            "Get to medical, you moron," Mike said, making no outward regard for the gesture.

            "Want me well enough to knock out later?"

            "You know it," Mike said, and headed back to his waiting squad.

            As the adrenaline left him, white stars blossomed in his eyes. His ribs burned. His right arm did not ache as sharply as before but throbbed still. Erwin bore it and shouted orders at the transport crews while keeping an eye on Mike and his squad.

            As he watched Mike address his team, a string of desperate pleading met his ear. He turned as Levi approached him with a frightened Isabel pulling at his arm and begging him to return to the medical tent.

            "Leave us, Isabel," Erwin said. "And good work," he added, as she looked frightfully from Levi to Erwin, and returned to her post. Levi met his eye as she left, his face blanked.

            "You shouldn't be on your feet," Erwin said. "I'm surprised you can walk after that-"

            "I won't keep you from your gift wrapping for long," Levi said flatly, a faint tremor lancing through his frame. Erwin shouted another order to the next shipment of steel sheets before Levi went on.

            "You fucking snake. I'd sooner work for a worm if I had the choice-"

            "Intermipol is always hiring."

            "Isabel is fucking traumatized-"

            "Isabel was evaluated and cleared. She suffers no more than we all do. You will not dictate her role in the Corps."

            "Go fuck yourself," Levi breathed, the beginnings of a twitch starting at the corner of his eye, though he remained expressionless otherwise. To any who spared a glance, they appeared to share an especially dull conversation.

            "You need to rest," Erwin said.

            "In all your fun up there, you missed something. Farlan had to be forcibly sedated when he saw, read, whatever, that five meter. Panic attack."

            "Magnolia had one task long after the titans were corralled and she performed admirably. I would not have sent her if sh-" Erwin paused and ordered the next grating shipment.

            "You trained her in secret, you son of a bitch. You didn't even ask me-"

            "Did you ask me if you could tap my private lines with Mike?" At Levi's silence, Erwin said, "There was no other way you could have known to turn around and engage that last titan."

            "If I hadn't," Levi said, gritting his teeth to stifle a wave of pain, "you would have been-"

            "If _I_  hadn't, you would still be up th-"

            A scuffle started behind them. Mike's team was split in two. Two agents had begun to usher a third back into Mike's chopper as another, a lanky agent with a deep frown, shouted after them.

            "She didn't mean it, chief," the agent pleaded with Mike. "She thought the commander was in danger, she saved him-"

            "Or she coulda' blown Levi's head clean off," Mike said. "Don't worry kid," he added with a wink, "Beckert's lookin' at a wrist slap. We know her heart was in the right place, but orders are orders."

            Beckert waved dismissively at the troubled agent. "He's right, Neil, I fucked up. Don't worry, man, I'll be fine," she said, and turned to board the waiting chopper.

            The agent moved to follow. Mike put a hand on his shoulder as Beckert looked back and shook her head in warning. Levi tensed beside Erwin and took a step forward. His back was bloodied. Shards still emerged, even after piecing several layers of harness vests. His hand edged toward a side holster.

            "Commander, we have urgent-" Nanaba started in his ear.

            "Hold off on that, Nan," Erwin said.

            "You're shaking, Foley. Get to the med tent, they'll fix you up," Mike said. As the agent folded his arms over his chest and turned to head there, Mike glanced at Erwin and lifted a brow. Erwin nodded.

           

_Mike,_

_3rd Years' records clean. Commendable, even. Think mission might be to maintain status quo (keep us/me alive?) until unknown date. Chopper crash was staged. Made you fake interference in case they tapped comms (they did). First mole is agent who fired that shot. Reprimand them publically. Might root out second._

 

            Erwin caught the note crumpled in Mike's palm. Mike leaned over to another agent, perhaps to instruct them to tail Neil Foley.

            Foley stopped.

            "I'm sorry," he muttered, perhaps to Beckert. Perhaps to himself. Foley withdrew a handgun, sighted Erwin, and fired.

            A hard flash of pain riveted his eyes shut, but a nearby volley of ear-splitting shots forced them back open. Levi had returned fire. Foley was dead on his feet.

            The body crumpled as Mike bellowed something at Levi.

            Erwin couldn't make out the words, couldn't read them on his lips. He forced himself to keep standing, but he felt twenty feet high, as if he stood on a mountain, as if the blood streaming through his hands fed the rivers below. He fell to his knees. The ringing had to stop. The ringing wouldn't stop.

            Hands clasped him, his head, his hands. Someone checked his pupil response with a pin light. Another asked him a question he still could not hear. He shook his head uselessly. Yet another steadied him as an enormous pressure descended on his head. Many hands wound gauze round and round. An agent mopping up blood streaming down his neck met his eye, tugged at her own ear, then pointed to Erwin's.

            He caught sight of Levi through the flurry of hands. He looked back at Erwin as if for the first time, as if he meant to immortalize the sight. Mike forcefully whipped him around and shouted something.

            He strained to hear the one-sided spat, but the ringing persisted, more so from Levi's whiplash response than Foley's shot. Levi said nothing as Mike descended on him. He wouldn't move his eyes from Erwin, from his ear.

            Beckert was especially quiet as the two agents beside her stood in shocked silence, their grip on her arms loosening.

            "Hands on your head!" Erwin shouted at Beckert, trusting his words to carry though he could barely hear them himself. The agents treating him jumped at the shout. Levi and Mike turned as Beckert slipped out a knife, slashed out of the agents' grip, and tore down the street. Mike gave chase as Levi aimed. A shot  to the calf and she was grounded.

            Nanaba flew to Erwin's side and held his face in her hands.

            "Are -- a-- rig--? ---ase, --n you h--- me? P---se-"

            "Slowly," Erwin said, keeping an eye on Levi and Mike as they apprehended Beckert.

            "I'm s---, I'm --rry, ple---, y-- n--- to lie do--"

            "Wait-" Erwin said, thanked the spooked medical team, and rose to his feet. He shut his eyes as the pavement spun sharply. Nanaba gripped his arm to support him as he walked, knowing better than to dissuade him.

            He approached Mike as he cuffed Beckert. Another pair of agents drew Beckert to her feet as best they could with her wounded leg. Mike rose, caught Erwin's approach, and descended on Nanaba. From his pointed gestures, Erwin assumed it was for not shoving him into a bed that very moment.

            "I'm fine, Mike," Erwin started, "I'm-"

            Mike was apoplectic. " _Y-- --re sh-- in the head_ -" 

            Then Mike perked up at something Erwin's fitfully returning hearing could just barely make out. Levi was asking the two agents something, the two who Beckert had broken from, the two Beckert had hurt. Erwin could just make it out.

            " _How many cuts?_ "

            Levi returned with his answer, his eyes fixed to Beckert's. There was no sadistic pleasure in them, no joy. There was no remorse either. He simply was, and that pitiless, unstoppable void was far more terrifying than the cruelest promise, the vilest taunt.

            Her breathing grew ragged as he neared, eyes wide with fear. She struggled. She screamed around her gag. Mike blocked his way. He might have strangled Levi then and there had half the Corps not been watching.

            "Co---nder, tell this trigg-- happ- dog to stand d--n," Mike seethed as he watched Levi.

            Levi rolled the chamber of his revolver in answer. He looked to Erwin. He did not plead, did not demand. He only waited.

            "Shou-- I rem--d you that we need at least  _one_  of --em alive for q--stioning?" Mike pressed.

            Erwin nodded as Levi followed an errant string of blood crawling down the length of Erwin's jaw. "We do." Mike visibly relaxed. Beckert's eyes rolled back in relief. The drop rolled to his chin and fell. It burst on the cold concrete.

            "You heard him," Erwin said to Levi. "We need her alive."

            Beckert thrashed. Mike's face contorted in shock. "Commander-"

            "Stand down," Erwin ordered, and plugged his remaining ear this time.

            Nanaba pulled Mike aside as Levi aimed.

            "One," Levi counted. Right foot.

            "Two." Right foot.

            "Three." Left leg.

            "Four." Left foot.

            "Five." Left foot.

            Nanaba gripped Erwin's arm tighter as Beckert screamed, as she writhed, as the shots rang through the silenced streets. The entire operation was momentarily stalled. Mike averted his eyes in disgust. Erwin watched.

            "Commander," Nanaba said as a howling Beckert was hurried to medical, "Figures I have to chase bad -ews with more b-- news, but-"

            "Go on," Erwin said.

            "I'm gues--ng you two- or three -" she said, glancing from Mike to Levi, "Wh--ever. That looked like a spy bust if I ever s-- one, but I h-pe you two prepared som---ing for the others."

            "Others?" Mike said as Levi snapped, "Spit it out."

            "The agents stat--ned at a subway entrance j-st east of here were --sassinated. Shot in the head. All five. Entr--ce was forced open. We're d-ing a sweep now. If a titan broke through..."

            Mike and Erwin exchanged glances.

            "We're not -bout to speculate in the m--dle of the street," Mike said.

            "Seconded. It's not s-fe here," Nanaba said, then grimacing sympathetically at Erwin's head, added "Erwin's going to The Ring."

            "On whose authority?" Erwin asked.

            "What's -he Ri--'?" Levi asked.

            "Ours," Mike said.

            "You'll have to explain that one, Zakarius," Erwin said as he finished wrapping the remaining length of gauze around his head. "I'm not abandoning the Survey Corps now."

            "You're not abando-"

            "Hold on, Nan. ---ge, you and I had the --iginal contract," Mike said to Erwin. "We only used it once, right bef--e radicals tore up the Silvers. Hange chose the wine, rem--ber?"

            "Get to the point."

            "Hange's indisposed. The vote falls to the --xt ranking officer. That --uld be Nanaba."

            "What's 'The Ring'?" Levi asked.

            "A spy bust at an incurs--n zon-," Nanaba counted on her fingers, " _A shot to the --ad_ , a mass shoo---g two --ocks away, and," she said, glaring at Levi, "a very  _public_  punishm-"

            "Torture," Mike corrected.

             She looked at Erwin. "You're going. You're both g--ng."

            "What," Levi growled, "is 'The Ring'?"

            "A safe house. Our oldest," Erwin explained.

            Mike frowned at Nanaba. "He's not --ing with Erw--."

            "That systems virus shut --wn the newer houses," Nanaba said. "The Ring's our best bet. You want one of them in an unsecure safe hou-e?"

            " _He's not going with Erwin_."

            "Don't I get a vote?" Levi asked cheekily.

            Erwin eyed Levi's back as Mike scowled. It was still bloodied and filthy. His hair was matted with blood. Miniscule shards were embedded in his scalp.

            "I'll go," Erwin said.

            "Good. Nan and I will-"

            "If," Erwin said, "Levi comes with me."

            "Let it go, Mike," Nanaba said. "You're actin' like Levi's gunnin' for Erwin-"

            "Isn't he?" Mike said darkly.

            " _Enough_ ," Erwin snapped. Nanaba and Levi jerked at the outburst.

            "-sn't it funny," Mike said under his breath, "that all this came to a head -fter he's been sneak--g into the Security --vision for months, snatch--g files, --suing orders under my name-"

            "You said yourself it was necessary to-"

            "Now?" Mike said, gesturing to their surroundings, to the spray of blood soaking the ground after Beckert's punishment, to Erwin's mangled ear, "Now I'm not so sure." Levi listened motionlessly. His eyes kept returning to Erwin's ear.

            Erwin shut his eyes for a moment. His ribs, his ear, his arm, they all seemed to have launched a coordinated assault on his nerves. Nanaba rubbed his back soothingly.

            "Go," Nanaba said. "We'll wrap -p the tower. A week in The Ring and we'll have swept Panac--, beefed up security, sent the --tan stats to R&D-"

            "Mailed flam--g bags of shit to Int--mipol's door," Levi suggested.

            "First order of business," Nanaba said to that, and a bit too seriously. "We'll send an agent or two to accompa-"      

            "No," Erwin said. "We didn't anticipate the subway incident. That means Beckert and Foley weren't alone. We won't make that mistake again. Levi and I will go alone - no one enters or leaves."

            "Levi-" Mike started.

            "-needs to lay low after that reprimand," Erwin finished.

            "Your ear-" Nanaba started.

            "-will be fine. Levi and I have medical training, and The Ring is well-stocked."

            Mike pressed his mouth into a thin line. He said nothing, though his expression certainly spoke. Erwin ordered Levi to secure a bike and Nanaba to resume operations as he took Mike aside.

            "I want you," Erwin began, "to acquire and run tests on the-" He stopped to breathe, not anticipating his shortness of breath, "-city's air and water. Then contact our blade manufacturers, find out if they've-" He stopped to breathe again. "-if they've tinkered with the composition, anything. Bikes too. Check our ventilation systems, our fuel suppliers, our-"

            "Erwin, what's this ab-" Mike asked, then bit his tongue and said with a familiar resignation, "Nevermind. I'll do it. Just, for god's sake, lay down-"

            "Mike, I-" Perhaps he had lost too much blood. His hands were surely as bloodless as they felt and his head as dizzy as the spinning world suggested, yet for a moment, he possessed unbridled clarity.

            "I waited. I waited too long and it came to this-"

            Nanaba whistled for attention and motioned to Levi as he returned with a bike. "Break it up, boy scouts."

            Erwin signaled that he'll be right there.

            "Waited for what?" Mike asked.

            "I thought it was some private quirk, a personal weakness. I was so self-absorbed-"

            " _Waited for what?_ "

            "I dream. Mike, I dream too."

            Mike did not immediately understand. Or he chose not to. His face betrayed nothing.

            "Not of your world," Erwin said, head spinning doubly at the finality of the confession, "but something...something stranger. Older. Levi dreams too-" 

            " _What?_ "

            "By his own admission. And Hange-"

            "Stop. A sabbatical once in a million years doesn't-"

            "Exactly. Hange  _never_  requests a sabbatical. We always force them to take vacations. That machine. The carvings- go to Isabel. She has a copy of-" He struggled to breathe for a moment. Mike laid a hand on his arm to steady him."-of Hange's writings- Mike. You can't stand there and tell me all this isn't connected. This might be another kind of attack. Psychoactive materials in the water, poisons-"

            Mike shook his head. "So you dream."

            "Yes."

            "The visions? The hallucinations? You see me, and Hange, and - and him?" he added with a distasteful glance at Levi. "You're forced awake like you've been drowning, your smell or sight or  _something_  changes even when you're awake? It's the same damn thing every time? The same world? The same people? All that? We're not talkin' the usual nightmares here, chief?"

            Erwin nodded.

            "Do you, really? You're not fucking with me?" Mike pushed, watching Erwin with an intensity Erwin seldom saw from him, from an otherwise easygoing, untroubled man. So much, too much had changed in those months. Mike had become so haggard. His freest smiles became guarded, his jokes silenced. The most vivid titanic nightmares could not begin to do that to him. But this did.

             _I did this_ , Erwin thought.  _I did this to him._

            "I do, Mike. I'm-"

            Mike embraced him. Erwin was speechless, even alarmed.

            "You bastard," Mike muttered, taking care to avoid his bandaged ear. "You honest-to-God bastard."

            Erwin returned it. His right arm had grown less petulantly pained.

            "I should have said something. I knew something was up. I thought it was the film. The division survey. Him-" Mike scowled at Levi. "You can't keep thinking you can solve it all on your own. Solve it all in a day. I mean, knowing you, you could," he added ruefully as he withdrew and glanced at his ear, "-and you'd kill yourself doing it."

            "As soon as I come back," Erwin said, "the four of us are coordinating properly. No more secrets."

            "That so? Since we're being open all of a sudden," Mike said, "I'll give you something to chew on while you're in there - soon as you sit the hell down." He walked Erwin to the bike. Levi tossed a helmet to Erwin, who adjusted the soaked gauze on his head to cushion the wound as best he could. Mike helped seat him on a street curb as Levi checked the engine.

            "Kronos," Mike said. "Sound familiar?"

            Levi tensed.

            "Which one?" Erwin said. "There's been no end to the copycats."

            "Right. Well, when you said this might be a kind of attack, I-" He frowned. He struggled giving voice to the words.

            "I saw it in-in a dream," he whispered. "Just once."

            "Saw what?"

            "Abandoned town. Some business deal. Then some kid writes "Kronos" in the sand. With a K. It could be nothing-"

            "It could be a lead," Erwin said. "Find the copycats. Bring them in for questioning."

            When the medical team cleared him, Erwin called over Nanaba. He unclasped the master console from his wrist, attached it to hers, and brought a closed fist to his heart.

            Nanaba opened her mouth on a question, but she had always been quick to understand. A concerted effort had begun among the Survey Corps' leadership to encourage solidarity among the disparate global divisions. Unity. To rise above the confines of what was expected of an espionage organization, or a paramilitary group, even a peace-keeping enterprise. They were all these and they were more. They were a creature all their own. If they intended to sever Intermipol's leash, they needed to show it.

            She saluted in return.

           

            Dawn broke as they left the city. Levi held on to what little stretch of waist remained that didn't pull from Erwin a pained wince.

 


	8. The Ring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫[Fever Ray - If I Had A Heart](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuSzQCLjf0A&ab_channel=Unkillable333music)
> 
>  

            The air was too heavy. Erwin blew the dust from the plate of a console lid before unlocking it and powering up the complex.

            In its fledgling days, the Survey Corps manufactured its own blades. After one too many humbling encounters with early titans made it clear that traditional firepower had neither the precision nor effectiveness they needed, they created their own industrial forges to process and shape lightweight titanium alloys for their black blades. When it became clear that the titan threat would not end in a day, the manufacturing was expanded and outsourced, and those forges shut down.

            Erwin located the med bay and withdrew the items he needed. He shrugged off his jacket and folded his shirtsleeves. He ran the tap at a cracked sink and started scrubbing his hands. In all the excitement, a few nails had chipped nearly to the root. He hadn't noticed.

            The underbellies of these first forges were later repurposed to host clandestine meetings and function as mission checkpoints. Some among them became safe houses, although they too were retired once a new generation of sanctuaries was created, the very same that was compromised by that errant virus. Only The Ring remained.

             Erwin took the slammed door from the main hall to mean that Levi had finally been cleared and debugged by security. A string of sharp thuds from a thrown helmet echoed over the rush of running water.

            They hadn't spoken a word on the road.

            Levi stalked into the med bay. Erwin let him pass wordlessly and out through an opposite door. In a minute, he appeared where he had walked in before, having come full circle through the complex. The Ring was sensibly named. The structure wound around a hard bedrock center far underground. 

            Erwin felt eyes on him, on his hands. He scraped dried blood from beneath his nails.  

            The next eight days will be unforgiving.  Confined spaces were anathema to Levi when the poison of post-operation melancholia curdled his blood. And that was not the worst of it. Levi dreamed. His admission was so tentative that Erwin wondered if he had imagined it. He had to resurrect their meeting.

            A brief scuff of his heel and Levi was gone again. Erwin caught the distant thuds and clicks of opened doors and cabinets. Something fell with a dense thud.

            Levi returned and folded his arms across his chest. His fingers dug crescent shaped trenches into his arm.

            "Scrubbing to the bone, or what?"

            His voice, like Erwin's, was splintered from an uninterrupted night of barked commands.

            Erwin dried his hands and glanced at Levi, who still watched with a caged, predatory energy. Dark shadows pooled under his eyes. His fingers jerked. Erwin motioned for him to follow, grabbed a medical kit and metal tray, and led him further into the complex. Their footfalls were the only sound. He stopped them in a modest library.

            "How's the smell here?" Erwin asked. "Better?"

            "Shitty," he said hoarsely, and stalked around the room, checking corners. Checking for cameras and audio transmitters, Erwin guessed, though he was informed, as Erwin was, that there were none. He also guessed that Levi would do three and a half Ring-wide sweeps for them before the day was out.

            Erwin noted a stubborn angle to his posture. He did not turn his back to Erwin, did not keep him out of sight, not for a second.

            "Dry, at least," Levi added, nose flaring in disgust at the swirls of dust upset by his passing.

            Erwin hummed in agreement  and placed the metal tray on the desk. Levi listened to the metallic clinks of tweezers and ointments being arranged on the desk.

            "Dissecting a book?"

            Erwin looked up.

            "Strip."

            Levi blinked. He watched Erwin soak a cloth in alcohol and wipe down each instrument as he stalked restless circles around the room. When Erwin finished, he tapped the desk and repeated the request.

            "What, no dinner first?" Levi drawled. It lacked even his usual bite. They had gone without the most cursory rest for more than a day.  

            "It's unlike you," Erwin murmured.

            "What?"

            "To hide. And so poorly."

            "You sure that bullet didn't make a turn?"

            Erwin nodded at Levi's bloodied jacket. "Anyone else would have taken that off by now."

            "I just came in-"

            Erwin gave him a knowing look. The blood in his hastily stitched ear began to pound.

            "What am I being accused of, again? Your men searched me - no wires, no implants - none of that shit. So why-"

            Erwin may have been more patient, more forgiving, had his head not resumed sawing itself in two.

            "May I offer a bit of constructive criticism? From one professional to another."

            Levi's jaw worked. "How generous."

            "You're selective when you overcompensate."

            "And if you encrypted your comm lines like your conversations, maybe I'd have a harder time tapping them."

            "You thought keeping the jacket would avert suspicion, but you couldn't get rid of that helmet fast enough. You can barely let yourself breathe. You wiped down every doorknob you touched, every handle," Erwin said, glancing at the neatly folded square of cloth in Levi's pants pocket.

            "And how would you-"

            "It was in the other pocket when you first came in," Erwin said. Then, softer, "If I doubted before that the field medics didn't finish the job, I'm certain now. "

            Levi stared coldly. "They finished."

            "I hope you don't think me so callous that I notice nothing at all."

            "That's never been a problem," Levi muttered. Something shifted in his gaze. He looked at Erwin and beyond him.

            "It's only me. Please."

            Levi watched him, chest rising faster. His eyes darted to his arm, again, to his right arm.

             "Fix your ear. I'll do it myself," he said, and turned to leave.

            "Cтоять."  _Stop._

            Levi stopped. By his sharpened breath, it seemed he hadn't meant to, seemed as if his body had betrayed him. He looked back and said, "You're not commander. Not in here."

            Erwin's boots sank lightly in the thin carpet. Levi did not look up. Erwin's hand rose and slowly threaded a speck of glass from Levi's hair. It glistened as it fell from his fingertips.

            "Strip."

 

            A lamp angled crookedly at the scarred back. The useless, torn, perfectly folded jacket, harness and shirt were laid to the side. Glass clinked into the metal tray. The medical team at the incursion site had gotten the larger pieces out before Levi had come to, yet a glass mural of smaller shards still glistened in his skin.

            He was so rigid that Erwin suffered sympathetic aches in his back and shoulders as he worked out the pieces. Every so often, Erwin's eyes wandered back to his nape. He had muted his surprise at the discovery, but he was magnetized all the same to the twin black barbells piercing the flesh, just low enough to sit below a collar. Levi made no mention of them, so neither did Erwin.

            Little but the clink of glass against metal interrupted his work at first. He began on the least sensitive swathes of the shoulders and back, communicating his position by moving outward in a widening ring. Harsh lamplight fell on tightly wound muscle, on scars like precious etchings.

             "We were going to rob you blind," Levi suddenly said, the sound a rough whisper, a deceptively intimate thing.

            Erwin removed a shard and dabbed a cool cloth against a rising bead of blood.

            "Throwing Farlan in the security division? You gave a thief the master key."

            A stubborn shard finally slid out. He moved to the next.

            "But Farlan wouldn't do it. He believed all this. He believes in you. Maybe all his common sense was in his eyes."

            Erwin blew coolly on the reddened skin.

            "I did it myself. I found your movements. Your codes. I knew you were planning that film weeks before you briefed me and the others. I could have destroyed you in a day. All of you."

            Erwin swept a damp cloth across the scrapes and patted his back dry.

            "I could-I could have-"

            Erwin popped open a tube of antibiotic ointment. Levi twitched at the sound. Erwin started at the flat planes of his shoulder blades and trailed circles across hard, corded muscle until Levi's shoulders began to fall.

            "While you may certainly keep trying," Erwin started, winding the circles wider, digging in harder, his own voice a rough whisper after scraping it raw with the litany of commands he'd barked last night, "you can't provoke me into harming you. Least of all like this."

            The shoulders rose again. Knuckles paled as they gripped the edge of the desk. Some sort of finality rose in the shift in his crossed legs and the tension in the cords of his neck. Then it withered away, as if it hadn't been there at all.

            "I wasn't bluffing," Levi said simply. 

            Erwin's hands moved in ever-widening circles. He could have easily dabbed the cream on every individual wound and been done twice over, but it would have been criminal when Levi's breathing had finally begun to deepen, when the stone back began to give. 

            "I know."

            Not in as much detail as Levi generously provided, but Erwin expected nothing less. It had taken some time to obtain Intermipol's files on him, but once he had, the signs were clear. Just not to Intermipol. As he integrated Levi into the Corps, Erwin had pieced together his history from seemingly unrelated heist records and cold cases from the most cursory site notes. His brutal cleanliness and attention to detail on the job had betrayed him long ago. Just not to Intermipol.

            "I'm moving up," Erwin murmured, hands gliding over the slope of his shoulders. For a fleeting moment, they closed loosely around the column of his neck, and a savage thought struck him. It was the sibling of the sly, intrusive voice that suggests leaping from a dizzying height, the brief shock in the fingertips as they squeeze the wheel near a passing car, squeeze so they don't dare swerve of their own volition and splay the heart across the windshield. He thought, as his hands hovered over the frantic drum of his beating heart and closed just so, he thought, how simple it was to squeeze. From the way Levi's breath rattled out of him at the half-touch, Erwin wondered if he had shared the thought.

            Levi didn't flinch at the worst of the wounds. Not a twitch as Erwin irritated the same poor inch of scalp to pry out the mosaic's pieces. Yet he jumped as if scalded at any stray movement near his nape. He jerked at a single misdirected breath.

            His agents suffered varying sensitivities at their napes, but Levi's was by far the most severe he had seen. He hadn't even served a year. Erwin became hyper-aware of his hands and lessened his touch. He turned away before each exhalation.

            The lamp flickered. Dust motes played on the gentle waves Erwin cast with his arms.

            "Thank you."

            Levi turned his head slightly.

            "For stealing your shit? Coulda just asked, if that's what gets you off. Would've done it sooner."

            "No."

            Erwin's hand rose. It was impulsive. He meant to lay it on Levi's shoulder. A gesture of comfort, nothing more. Levi even looked askance at him. It wouldn't be startling.

            His hand fell.

            "For letting me treat you. For everything you've done," Erwin said. "You're an invaluable-"

            Asset? Officer?

            Partner?

            "-addition to the Corps."

            Again, the knuckles paled against the grain of the desk. White threads of scar tissue curled around the tension in his hands.

            Soon, Erwin dotted the last of the angry skin with the ointment and moved to pack the equipment away. After he returned the items, Erwin gathered whatever materials he needed to set up a temporary office in the library. As he flipped through data entries on a worn information kiosk, a sharp knock drew his eye. Levi stood by the door, remaining shirtless to air his back.

            "Ah," Erwin said. "Good, I wanted to brief y-"

            "Change your bandages."

            "What?"

            "They're soaked through. Can't you feel that?"

            Erwin felt around the cloth and frowned at the dampness. "No. How-"

            "Take them off."

            Levi watched as Erwin unwound the cloth. He drew nearer and made a disgusted noise.

            "I want the names of the visionaries responsible for this modern fucking art."

            "Levi, it's fine. We were all-"

            "It's half finished. You don't get half-infected, or half-fucking-dead. Sit."

            "I'll have to-"

            "You're going to sit." Levi turned to leave.

            "Really, I can take care of-"

            "You're shaking," Levi said as he left. He yelled behind him, "Bet you swapped out the morphine for hot air when they weren't looking."

            "Hot air would have-" Erwin stopped. Perhaps he had taken one too many shortcuts to hurry them along.

            Levi returned with another bag. He kicked a chair into place that was clearly meant for Erwin. His hands were scrubbed raw.

            "Fair warning, commander, I haven't stitched anything in a while-"

            "Levi, wait. It's not a problem, I can reach it comfortably and-"

            Levi gave him such a look that Erwin couldn't bear to finish.

            He moved around Erwin, frown lines growing as he prepared the suture needle and snapped on a pair of gloves. Lamplight caught on the planes of his abdomen, on the livid scars riding the rise and fall of his chest, on the fresh, purpled welts that wound like ribbons across his torso, harness welts that carved into his sides and slipped past his belt. A deep, jagged scar kissed his left hip. It was older than the others.

            Levi blew into the wound. Erwin swallowed thickly. He noticed too late a hand resting at his shoulder, a thumb pressed against his nape.

            "Shit," Levi muttered, noticing it too and withdrawing sharply.  Erwin must have held his breath. It struggled out of him when the pressure left.

            "Finally feeling that shit," Levi muttered as he washed the dried blood from Erwin's neck and hair, behind his ear. "Thought the recruits were bullshitting me, but it's real."

            "Uncanny, isn't it?" Erwin said. "A few ground agents wear dampening collars to numb the area. Some can't even stand a light breeze. Though I suppose it makes sense..." He trailed off, eyelids growing heavy as Levi carded his hair to one side to keep the strands clear of the wound.  

            "Makes sense..." Levi repeated dryly.

            Levi spent a small eternity wiping the blood from his jaw and neck. His skin became heated. Erwin didn't speak of it, didn't hurry him along.

            He didn't speak when he adjusted Levi's grip on the needle driver, his own hands dwarfing Levi's. His hands stilled as Erwin's left them, as if he waited for some remark or admonishment. Erwin said nothing.

            The needle glanced across his neck, a tickle where a blade once sank. Erwin shut his eyes and thought again, the same way one thought _jump_  and  _swerve_  and  _squeeze_ , how little pressure it would take. How little to slide through skin, to tattoo veins. He bared his neck.

            The thread shut the frayed ends of the punished ear in silence. Only Erwin's occasionally stifled groan penetrated it.

            "Talk," Levi said. "Get your mind off your shitty ear or you'll be stuck with that face."

            "Incredible. Levi, the harbinger of old wives' tales."

            "Fuck off."

            "I'm a bit tied down at the moment," Erwin said, a smirk breaking through a pained wince.

            He felt a stream of cool air numb the flushed skin. Levi angled the lamp closer.

             "Why did you save the climbers?"

            "Why?"

            "Yes. Why."

            "If you're under the impression that my willingness to sacrifice agents amounts to reckless abandonment, I'll have to disappoint you. I save as many as I can, if I can. That is all I can do without compromising our goal."

            Levi said nothing to that.

            "I'm sorry," Erwin added softly, "about Sing and Abrams."

            "Forget it."

            "No. It's important to mourn. To feel-" Erwin winced at another puncture. "Lose that part of yourself and you lose your humanity. Levi," he said gravely. Levi's hands slowed. "Don't lose that part of yourself."

            The lamp flickered again.

            "You make a lot of assumptions about my humanity."

            "Not assumptions. I know only what I see. You trained those three yourself, and they were airborne within the week. You disciplined each wave of recruits. You guided Farlan and Isabel into their roles, you convinced the global division chiefs, the world. You were there when I-" It was too late. Levi's hands stilled. "-when we all needed you. Thank you."

            Levi did not speak again.

 

            They fell into something of a routine. They were hardly on pristine terms. Levi was slow to forgive Erwin's orders to Isabel, and Erwin was not about to forget Levi's liberal regard for their security systems in light of Foley and Beckert's circumvention. Yet when the novelty of it all settled, what remained was a pattern that grounded them when everything else was in freefall.

            Erwin hadn't realized it until the second night he had been caught in a looped dream. Until he found himself impaled and squeezed and gnashed alive between a titan's rotting teeth again and again and again in a single night, until the second time he was shaken awake and given a mercifully solid hand to grasp until he was sure he was in his own body again, a hand that understood, that squeezed back.

            He didn't know where Levi slept, only that he was gone for three or four hours at a time until the swipe of a duster or the rustle of a broom announced his reappearance. Erwin's efforts to ask were soundly shot down. Guilt strangled him as he read the burgeoning signs - the exhaustion, the silence, the snapping, monosybillic answers. Any attempt at even broaching the subject of visions was met likewise with stubborn silence, never mind that Levi seemed to develop a sixth sense for when Erwin's own threatened his sleep.

            Erwin spent the first five days assembling contingency plans and restructuring their movements in preparation for the film's drop. Accounting for fallout from Panacea.  Accounting for Beckert. Erwin had limited contact with the Survey Corps from within. Only truly critical news would have been forwarded to the commander. He forced himself to take kindly to the unnerving silence.

            Beckert. Foley. The subway killings. Panacea itself. Even if they did not know the particulars of Erwin's plans, whoever orchestrated this tightening ring of warning shots knew that change drew nearer. They knew something stirred within the Corps.

            He needed to contact his distribution network the moment he returned. If a single agent disappeared, fell sick, or took one less spoon of sugar in their coffee, he needed to know. There will be no more surprises. No mistakes.

             "Hey."

            He needed to interrogate Beckert. Examine Foley. Reprocess their records. Investigate the subway entrance. Sweep Panacea. Meet with Dot Pixis. Investigate Kronos copycats.

            "Smith."

            Check with Nile. Demand an explanation from Intermipol. Panacea was clearly a pro-titan radical's work in conception, but too massive in execution. Either they had help from a powerful friend, or their numbers were growing exponentially faster than their data suggested.

            Data that was supplied by Intermipol.

            "Erwin."

            Radicals were their jurisdiction, yet Intermipol was nowhere near the scene, and had even delayed their efforts. Foley and Beckert were clearly radicals - Mike could not have tracked them without the faintest scent of blood. Erwin wondered how long they had scrubbed it from their fingers and scraped it from their teeth until their nails howled and their gums popped. How little it mattered.

            A sharp thud yanked him out of his thoughts. Levi stood on the other side of the desk, rubbing his smarting hand.

            Levi tossed Erwin his phone. Erwin unmuted the broadcast.

             _"-brave National Guard troops stepped in to-"_

_"-frightening terrorist attack-"_

_"-evidence of titans in area confirmed to be fake footage created by disgruntled-"_

_"-Survey Corps under investigation-"_

            Erwin shut it off before Levi's pacing burned holes in the floor.

            "Something like this-" Levi snarled.

            "Even this."

            "They can't just-"

            "They can. They've explained away worse. Blamed us for worse."

            Levi's scowl deepened, but he stopped pacing.

            "In the middle of the city. In the  _fucking_  middle. A bomb would have made less noise-"

            "It's easier to pretend."

            "Yeah? Yeah. And you?" Levi said. He drew nearer. "Why aren't you pretending?"

            Erwin looked up to meet his eye as he leaned on a bookcase.

            "It would be so much easier, wouldn't it?"

            "Then why? Why fuck around with Intermipol, why bother with these spies? Why," Levi said, leaning back haughtily, "watch that same shot of me shoving metal into those freaks thirty-two times to get it just. Fucking. Right?"

            Erwin felt a tug at his lips. There was no use in denying that last one if Levi had such precise metrics. 

            "Something or someone is rallying the radicals," Erwin said. "They're becoming more daring, more organized. Soon, we'll be holing ourselves up in the same walls that-" He stopped. "Soon, we'll be in no position to retaliate at all. Humanity deserves more than the cheap wool Intermipol is intent on blinding it with."

            "You make a lot of assumptions about humanity."

            Erwin smiled faintly. "I know only what I see."

            "What do you see?" Levi pressed.

            Erwin followed the purpling shadows eclipsing his eyes. "I see the mothers and fathers our agents might have become had they not picked up a blade. I see all the art we've lost, all the medicine, the technology. All the laughter."

            "No one's gonna laugh at that film."

            "No. I don't expect them to."

            "I saw it."

            "I figured."

            "They're not gonna blame the Survey Corps. Not after seeing that. They'll make it personal."

            "They will. They have," Erwin added, gesturing to his bandaged ear.

            Levi did not respond at first. He narrowed his eyes, looked Erwin up and down.

            "If you're the bait," Levi said, "who's the hook?"

            "Everyone," Erwin said. "Once we force Intermipol's hand with the film, everyone's eyes will be on them. If we're supernaturally lucky, they'll realize their own overreach and grant the Survey Corps independence, or begin to, at least, and that will be that. If not, well. They'll have the world to contend with."

            "And you expect these dreams to - what? Do you a favor and take a vacation? Wait their turn?"

            "No. The day we return, we'll convene with Mike and Hange, get an idea of where they might be coming from. Even in the case of no foul play, we need to identify the source."

            Levi studied him for a moment. "Good." He nodded to his plans. "Don't let me keep you."

            He was at once the broad, flat plane of a blade and its splitting edge. Erwin began to wonder whether he had been so intent on molding him, preparing him, that he hadn't noticed that Levi might have been returning the favor.  

            Levi watched Erwin turn his attention back to his most recent project timelines, a multi-tiered system with branching resolutions, themselves branching into others, themselves into others still. There were no cameras in The Ring, no recording equipment of any kind save for a fingerprint check every twenty-four hours and a console strapped to their wrists that served as both heart-rate monitor and a direct emergency line to HQ. Erwin worked in code all the same. Force of habit.

            Levi rubbed idly at a dent in the wood's surface, but made no other move to engage him. He was slower to leave each time he approached Erwin, as if something waited on the tip of his tongue, something he weighed and weighed and finally swallowed before leaving as resolutely as he had entered. Erwin scratched notes in the margins with half a mind and minded Levi with the other.  

            A shadow shifted in his periphery. He turned as a leather band bloomed on Levi's chest.

            "Levi," Erwin whispered. Levi turned, and Erwin raised a hand, slowly. He mouthed  _May I?_  as if the barest whisper would scatter the shy thing. At the slightest, bemused nod, Erwin brought his palm to Levi's chest and traced the solid leather strap that crossed his shirt. A flare of recognition lit Levi's face, but before he spoke, Erwin muttered, "I'm still here. Don't say a word. Not yet."

            The inky smoke lashed across Levi's shoulders, around his waist. It melted and molded into straps and buckles. His shirt lightened before his eyes as if white paint sank into the dark weave. It split down the front as a trail of burgeoning buttons held it in place. A tan jacket wove itself over his shoulders. Erwin traced the trim, then the lapel. Levi's breathing quickened.

            "Erwin-"

            "Not yet," Erwin muttered. "Not yet..." His hand traveled upward and caught on the frayed edges of a patch. He reached toward his desk with a trembling hand and turned to a blank page. Levi's eyes darted from one hand to the other as one traced the blue thread and the other copied the symbol, the one he hadn't the skill to reproduce before, not when it rippled across a hundred shrouds, not when it disappeared between a titan's jaws. But he could see it now. He could touch it.

            Levi muttered something about taxes. Erwin grinned. "Strange thing to worry about," he said.

            Levi's brows descended. "What is?"

            Erwin realized too late which Levi had spoken.

            "What is?" Levi pressed, but it was distant now. Erwin wasn't sure he had said anything at all.

            <King takes baths in gold or something?> Levi muttered.

            Sunlight draped over his dark hair, his pale skin. Erwin hummed in agreement. It was excessive. Getting the necessary funding for expeditions was itself a herculean effort without having their provisions taxed beyond all reason.

            <We'll find a way,> he said, another language borrowing his tongue as if by its own will, <We always->

            "Очнись."

            Erwin blinked. "What?"

            "Очнись," Levi said, louder.

            "Очнись."

             _Wake up._

            Erwin gasped. A violent ripple of light curdled his insides and spilled from his eyes. The wings shuddered. Blue thread spilled out of its singed feathers.

            Needles skewered his right arm and when he felt no savage sting he realized he wore a borrowed limb, a puppet's arm. In turns, his nose flooded with the stench of burning wood, of rotting joints and then white titanium melting hot into his leg straight through to the bone.

            "Очнись."

            He clenched his eyes shut. Veins of black and red wove hot across his eyes and pooled around his neck until all their million precious arms joined to plait for him a noose and it tickled until it squeezed and he was suffocating and he was falling.

            "Очнись."

             _Wake up._

            Hands threaded through his hair. The cacophony of white noise crackled away. Blood cradled his teeth. His hands were frozen to their miserable marrow but his face, his damp, clammy forehead was warm. He searched for his own limbs and charted the beaten, scarred expanse of his own skin and when he collected his eyes and climbed the arch of his own brow, he found it pressed to Levi's chest. 

            He prayed his tongue cooperated. "Forgive m-"

            "Молчи."  _Shut up._

            His attempts to extricate himself were firmly rejected by a pair of firm, insistent hands, one rooted in his hair, the other splayed over his back.

            "I'm-"

            "Молчи."  _Shut up._

            The whisper ghosted over his hair.

            Erwin stifled his erratic breathing. He silenced his burning lungs. It was habitual. His flesh embraced bullet and tooth and blade more often than he cared to recall, but revealing more than a pained smile even through curtains of blood and grime was unthinkable. He was an idea first and a man second. So often had his body nearly betrayed him that he should have known next it would try to conspire with his own mind.

            "Дыши."  _Breathe_.

            A hand carded through his hair. Fingernails scraped lightly through the grain of his undercut, through the shorn hairs one way, then another, then a third. Levi's chest moved beneath him. A heart pounded at his ear and he wondered whose fevered beat it was, wondered if he couldn't tell because they shared one between them. The slow, aching trails on his scalp were all he felt in the world, the beat all he heard.

            "Дыши."  _Breathe_.

             He clenched his eyes shut as a razor's edge split him open at the nape. His blood must have frozen in place. He couldn't feel its trickle along the valley of his spine. He couldn't hear the hiss.

            The blade returned and carved hymns into his skin that spelled  _breathe breathe breathe_.

             He obeyed the commandment and filled his lungs as the blade wove garlands with his nerves and he couldn't read the new commands over the old when a second kissed his nape, and then a third and a fourth, and when the broad side of another passed over his skin, he wondered between one soft groan and the next how titanium could be so pliant, so warm.

            "Дыши."  _Breathe_.

            He did not taste the walls anymore. He did not hear the screams.

            He did hear the thrum of an insistent heartbeat, felt the rush of blood in his ears. Erwin discovered his own hands and before they crumbled from his wrists he buried them in dark fabric, in another's skin, and at catching a soft sound that wasn't his own, he burrowed deeper to hear it again, to hear another soul again, and realized it was not steel but lithe, calloused fingertips  that threaded small comforts on his nape.

            Levi didn't protest again when Erwin shifted, when his hands fell from his waist and he pulled away from the beat in his ear, from the beat that had long since slowed and matched with his own, thud for thud. He didn't volunteer an  _"I'm okay"_  and Levi didn't ask. Nothing would have sounded as trite, as disingenuous.

            Coming out had never been so visceral before, so unforgivably violent. He could not burden anyone with his leash, least of all Levi. 

            The piercing.

            "That's what it's for," Erwin muttered.

            Levi followed his eyes and understood. He frowned, as if debating inwardly. Finally, he took Erwin by the wrist, sidled closer, and guided his hand to his own nape. Erwin traced the barbells with his fingertips.

            "They ground you."

            "Not my first choice," Levi admitted distastefully. "But nothing else was pulling me back. Now it's a hard yank when I feel it coming and I'm home. Stings like a bitch, but it's-"

            "It's inspired," Erwin said reverently, trailing soft rings around one, then the other. Levi tensed. Uncertainty passed over his face. The expression further purpled the shadows under his eyes.

            Erwin trailed with two fingers, then three. Though the lines in his forehead remained, Levi's shoulders softened. Soon, his head bowed. His eyes fluttered shut. Erwin's heart thudded in his ears. How often had Levi throttled him out of a vision? Checked in on him in the makeshift office to kick him out when he'd fallen asleep at the desk? Set the coffee when he woke?

            Was it not the same all these months? Levi had shadowed him until the duties of his position had been confirmed, yet even after, he was never far. He was the extra hand with late night reports, the hiss of blood on the field, the hope in his men.

            Levi adorned the promises Erwin threaded across his nape with the softest sounds. When his shoulders abandoned him at last, he rested his forehead against Erwin's.

            A lance of doubt seized Erwin's hands.

             _Breech of rank_ , it whispered.

            The lines at Levi's brow deepened at the contact and he grasped at Erwin's shoulders for support. Erwin trailed a thumb against his jaw and brushed dark strands from his eyes. A flash of pain lit Levi's face as if the touch stung, as if it burned, but he leaned into the open palm even so, and Erwin renewed his vows across his nape, across his throat. Levi sighed and braced a knee on Erwin's thigh.

             _Selfish._

            Another shuddering breath. Mint. Black tea. Erwin tasted it between them. He imagined the vapor's curl, the gleam on a porcelain cup. Levi's tongue passed over his lips. He followed the curve of Erwin's own with slivers of grey wound tight around blown black.

            Surely, Erwin thought long ago, months ago, it was an accident that their noses might have brushed.  It was no accident now.

             _Irresponsible._

           Levi's hand curled in his hair.

            Erwin turned away.

            He barely recalled the diffusing scoff or parting words when Levi read the tension in his shoulders and the lines on his brow ( _Had it been "Fine, flowers first" or "Gotta take a dump"? Had it been both?_ ). Erwin should not have touched him. Long after he had gone, Levi was the wrinkle in his collar, the warmth on his thigh. He was the mint in his lungs and the oaths on his neck.

            Erwin should not have touched him.

It began in his office in one dream. The capital in another. A tent in the third. It was after an argument, after a joke, after a meeting, after surviving. Their circumstances may have been the playthings of chance but not once did they part without stitching sighs into the hollows of their throats, without striking hot envy in Death with their burning blood.

He had been grateful for the insight. He thought he knew what not to say. What not to feel.       

            It was another in a chain of reminders that this man, this other commander with his face and his body and his ambitions, was not truly him. Not entirely. Ordinarily, his conviction manifested in the mundane, like the way his counterpart took his coffee or gripped his pen - too black and too tight, respectively. But nothing convinced Erwin as decisively as when the man stepped into his body, opened the blinds in his eyes, and fucked like the sun shuddered with each roll of his hips.

            Erwin didn't feel the burn as others did, as this other commander did. He didn't suffer the libidinous lance, the proverbial spark. He thought it a minor blessing, given his unforgiving profession, yet his disinterest for one sort of physicality was not so merciful as to extend to the others. Nanaba once laughed that he embraced like each one was his last, and more than one salacious rumor circulated about him and Mike, or him and Hange, or truly anyone with whom he passed his downtime.   

            He knew himself. He knew when he stood at a precipice. He knew it when all his precious reason couldn't claw Levi's name out of his blood.

            He had been so careful. No clap on the shoulder, no lingering handshake. No idle gaze. No reassuring embrace. The vision had unshackled his inhibitions and he hated it and he loved it.

             Erwin might have forcibly extinguished his misplaced fondness were he not waking every few weeks with a hiss at the phantom sting of nail marks carved hot into his back that he felt but never bore, were he not forcing away the fading echoes of rapturous sighs that should not have been his to hear.

             Neither were they his to hear in this world, nor from this Levi. It was enough that the space between them burned in that world. It was enough because it couldn't, wouldn't, in this one.

            They were as much soldiers and spies in that walled world as they were in this one and yet the price of failure here, of complacency, seemed to Erwin so much greater.

            He was selfish to think so, he knew. Wouldn't that other commander, that second him, think the same of his own burden? Would he not look at this world and, in the throes of indignation, declare how far the sky stretched for them, how longingly the sea swelled for them, and how blessed was humanity to have more than a wall between them and earnest extinction, how this humanity and its eleven billion souls to his scant million had bread and water and leisure and laughter?

            But Erwin was selfish, and he wore this body, and he commanded this Survey Corps and he breathed his first and last in this reality, and he knew the very earth was their own wretched wall and the galaxy was their sea and their stars and it was unfair to compare when he understood a little more with each vision that every person in every universe met their own fears and carved their own dreams with their own unenviable choices.

            Every night, Erwin watched himself send soldiers to their deaths. He watched Mike follow his last order. Hange. Nanaba. Yet he witnessed no one soldier slam into a castle wall or plummet from the height of Wall Maria or slide down a titan's cavernous gullet more often than Levi, who was his final order incarnate, who was Erwin's will made flesh.

            And though he woke from those visions with burning eyes and a leadened heart, he praised every shattered bone and thanked each emptied vein because anything less would have spelled regret and regret was an insult and a betrayal.

            He carded through his hair as if that would scatter the echoes of Levi's hands.

            One vision had manifested his worst fear.

            It couldn't have lasted longer than a few seconds. It was among the shortest that he remembered. Yet it was the most vividly explicit. The most horrifying.

             _Kill me_ , Erwin ordered.

            Levi had hesitated.

            The jolt of the slowing vactrain had bathed his eyes in red and thrust him out of the vision before he saw more, but he didn't need to.

            He almost struck it from his memory, but he knew, even in the depths of disbelief, that he couldn't ignore it. In time, he grew to be grateful for the warning. If in even one world his petulant desires could jeopardize their work, could taint the blood spilled by every commander and agent before them, it was one too many.

            One touch was one too many.

            He was an idea first and a man second, and he would sooner starve the second than betray the first. His may be the sweetest words and the warmest smiles, but he is no less death's servant, and like death, he wanted more. He will always want more. His was hungry work.

            Levi's loyalty was enough. It had to be enough. Erwin folded the winged symbol he had drawn and slipped it into his jacket.

 

            On the night before the eighth day, the dreams followed one another in rapid succession like a reel of hobbled together scenes from a dozen grainy films.

            A black mare galloped across a dusty plain, her rider bent low and urging her on. She galloped until the desert winds stripped the flesh from her bones, and still she ran. When her bones too splintered and withered into dust, the rider leaped from her back and ran with their own two legs. The rider ran until they joined her in the desert sands.

            A child, pink bulging cheeks streaked with tears, cooed at the gentle hiss of steam as a scratch on her toe knitted itself shut.

            A dozen mics jostled for his voice, a dozen cameras for his smile. A lone shadow flitted across the roof of a nearby tower. He smiled.

            A titan splayed itself over an enormous throne. It's golden spires grazed the moon. A rope bit into Erwin's neck, and the titan did not leer, did not stare stupidly or yawn. It smiled sadly, and Erwin saw as he plummeted and the rope snapped taut, that it shared his face.

            Titans as tall as towers stood at attention like a battalion of soldiers. As he passed between the behemoths, they brought their closed fists to their hearts.

            Erwin gasped awake. He was in the library, on a worn couch. A rag had been thrown over the desk lamp to dim the glare. He sat up and a wool blanket pooled in his lap. He couldn't remember where it had come from.

            He stood and slipped a few books out of their crooked shelves in the half-light. The words were English. He sighed in relief. He wasn't dreaming anymore. Erwin set them back and found a washroom. He caught himself in a mirror and ran his hand through his hair to give it some semblance of order, catching on his right ear as he did so. He looked closer. It was whole.

            Erwin gasped awake. Library. Couch. Lamp. The wool at his feet. His heart rebelled against the cage of his chest. Beads of sweat gathered in the hard lines on his brow. A hand snaked up to his ear and he was never so relieved to find a piece of him gone.

            Panacea. Beckert. Levi.  The dreams, too, returned to him as he stood, as if the architects of his memory could no longer dam the flow. For a sickening moment, he forgot which reality was truly his. He had dreamed of Panacea. No, of Wall Maria. He looked at his hands, his arms, his right arm. He curled his hands into fists. Rotated his wrists. His right was slower to respond. Much slower.

            Panic ignited in his chest. He had to ground himself. He had to know what was real.

            He had to find Levi.

            The walls squeezed. The ground was too far. The ceiling, too high. Levi wasn't in any of The Ring's central chambers. There was no sign of him at all. Erwin threw a sharp glance at his ear in every reflective surface he passed.

            He recalled The Ring's layout. As with all their safe houses, there were passageways that few knew of, and plenty that only Erwin himself knew existed. It was not unthinkable that Levi might have found one among them.

            At last, he found it. He removed the broom rack in a supply closet to access a door. The passageway it revealed was far cleaner than the others. Not a mote of dust. No heady subterranean musk. It was the one. He followed the narrow hallway to the door of the central boiler room.  He unlocked it and tried the handle. It wouldn't give.

            Erwin circled the room through a still-lesser known tunnel, its walls giving way to cold stone at a few junctions. He squeezed through the door at the end of the tunnel.

            His eyes watered at the sharp odor of disinfectant. Erwin slid a finger over a boiler plate as he passed it, coming away with a palm as clean as  before. What he imagined would have been decades of entrenched rust and grime were gone. Only surface corrosion bit into the steel pipes.

            He wound through the maze of glistening pipes until he found him. Levi's hair was disheveled by sleep. He was curled into a chair in a far corner, arms draped over the back.

            His wrists were chained to a steel beam.

            Erwin threw himself against the nearest wall and peered into the dimly lit room, heart pounding as one unforgivable scenario after another throttled his heart. He switched on the lights and cleared the room before checking the front door. Another chain fastened the door shut from the inside. He turned it over in his hands. The chain was black, secured by a number lock.

            Making his way to Levi, he found the same black chain, the same lock. Erwin looked him over. No signs of struggle, no fresh cuts or bruises. Faint marks on his wrists. Erwin drew nearer.

            Levi's eyes snapped open. He twisted, legs striking out to throw Erwin off his feet.  Erwin turned before they made contact. Levi stared as he stepped back. He stared as if Erwin himself had shackled him. Then his eyes drew downward to map the length of his right arm.

            The room's metallic hum conspired with the heartbeat in his ears to deafen Erwin entirely. Disinfectant mingled with the stench of metal.

            "Levi-"

            "You."

            Erwin read his lips more than he heard him say it.

            Levi's eyes remained on his arm. Erwin raised it, and up went his eyes with it. Then they sank into Erwin's own. Erwin swallowed thickly. The grey seemed to pass straight through.

            Levi reached out.

            Erwin took one step forward. Then another. As he drew nearer, he saw that Levi's pupils were normal. His speech and movements, likewise, were not slurred or slowed, nor tense or shaken. Yet he was not himself.

            Erwin offered his hand. Their fingers glanced off one another until they slotted together, and Erwin couldn't tell whose grip was firmer, whose breath came faster.

            "Levi-"

            Levi drew him closer, one hand turning Erwin's forearm to bare its underside as the other bunched Erwin's shirtsleeve at his elbow. He traced the dips and valleys of the muscle, the winding rivers of his veins.

            Erwin saw the blood before he felt the sting. Levi frowned at his reddened nail.

            "Sorry," Levi said as he reached for a handkerchief and pressed it to the beaded scratch on Erwin's arm. "Had to be sure."

            Levi's face betrayed as little as his words, so when he pressed Erwin's knuckles to his lips, Erwin nearly wrenched out of his grip in shock.

            "Too late," Levi muttered, folding Erwin's hand it into a fist and drawing it to his own heart as if in a salute. "Too fuckin' late."

            Erwin kneeled beside him. "What's too late?"

            Levi only shook his head.

            Erwin couldn't pretend anymore. This wasn't Levi.

            "You know," Erwin chanced. "You know who's making us dream."

            "It's too late."

            "Who is it? Please-"

            Levi's counterpart shook his head. His breathing became shallow, irregular.

            "Tell me-"

            He moved Erwin's hand to Levi's hip, moved his palm over what Erwin knew to be that jagged scar, the one older and more faded than the others.

            "He doesn't belong here," he said, breath coming fast.

            "Who?"

            The doppelganger scoffed.

            "Kronos."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tagging this thing is a nightmare...for confirmation's sake, Erwin in this 'core' reality is ace, but not in others


	9. gniR ehT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning for PTSD, disassociation, dysmorphia and self harm.
> 
> ♫ [Puscifer - Polar Bear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHZonzHWjQc&feature=youtu.be)

 

           Levi returned the medical kit to the infirmary and rummaged through a supply closet to replace his torn shirt. He bunched up the too-large sleeves at the elbow and stifled the itch at the base of his spine as cool cotton slid over his charged skin. The phantom touch of large, insistent hands prickled along his back, at his scalp, on his throat.

            An old painting hung near the closet. A meadow. A sky. Dust clung to the unremarkable thing like a heavy sheet. Levi swiped the grime from a distant oak.

            That night, he killed Erwin Smith.

            Levi woke to the chill of sweat on his brow and a tremor's gala in his limbs. He turned over on a groaning couch in one of The Ring's drawing rooms and pinched the shadow of the trigger's indent on the pad of his finger.

            He hid the knives in the morning. The commander consulted him for formation tactics and insisted they eat together. The fork trembled in the commander's right hand.

            On the second night, Levi didn't sleep.

            He reached the apex of the push up and stopped. When his pounding blood settled in his ears, he heard the muffled sound again.

            Levi had taken to patrolling the perimeter of the facility's dormitory when the commander slept. He had checked floorboards, inspected gas lines, prodded ventilation shafts and knocked on every flat surface in The Ring with ears tuned to catch a hollow answer that never came. He stood guard even so.  

            The door was icy against his ear. More rustling. The hinges whined. Levi left his shoes by the threshold and padded into the dimmed room. In a far corner, he found the one occupied bed and its one restless occupant. Sheets were tossed on the floor. A broad, scarred back faced him and flinched as if being whipped.

            Levi turned and left. If he was quick, he might forget that words like vulnerable and small and broken came to him when they shouldn't have, shouldn't ever have.

            As he grabbed a shoe and shoved it on, Foley's crumpling face came to him. As his heel met the sole, his finger twitched, hard. There was no trigger to push. He kicked off the shoe.         

            Levi stripped another bed and began to drape the new sheets over him when he saw it. He was laying on his right ear. With a muttered  _dumbass_ , Levi supported his head with one hand and turned him on his back with the other. Shock jolted Levi to his feet.

 

 _"Mike, I need immediate evac_."

 

            Twenty-five seconds. Ten to dive. Two to kill. Two to angle the titan's fall away from Corps and Guard personnel below. Ten to rise. One to see.

_"Come in. C-me in, Commander-"_

 

            Twenty-five seconds. Hot poisonous shame pooled in his gut. Levi could sooner name which color wasn't staining the man from the curve and dip of his collar to well past the hem of his trousers. They rode the shallow rise and fall of his chest as each breath rattled harshly in his throat. His parted lips had long since cracked. Twenty-five seconds.

 

" _I need immediate evac_."

 

            Heat coiled out of the flushed skin and Levi's palm burned and if it blistered to the bone he would deserve it and he would thank him. He hadn't cleared the roof. He hadn't stopped Foley in time. This was his bludgeoned canvas. An exhibition of his failures.

            Levi took up vigil on a nearby bed and scrawled suggestions on the commander's revised helidisc formations as he slept. He rose at the first wince to turn the man off his side again. He muttered softly in his sleep. It wasn't quite gibberish, but it was no language Levi recognized. 

            Twice, Erwin nearly thrashed out of the bed. Levi held him down. It wouldn't stop. Twenty-five seconds. Levi couldn't hear his own thoughts over the pounding in his ears. He couldn't tell if this was the dream or a seizure or both. Shake him awake? Strap him down? CPR? Twenty-five seconds.

            Erwin's eyes opened to slivers. He muttered his name, or maybe not. Levi couldn't tell. Erwin's hand found his and Levi squeezed and the convulsing lessened so he squeezed until his arm ached and Erwin stilled. He muttered something Levi couldn't hear.

            Levi left before he woke in earnest.

            On the third night, he nearly killed Erwin Smith.

             He slipped into the tower through the roof. His doppelganger chanced a last look out at a city laid prostrate and a sky scraped raw.  Chills cloyed at his skin. A strand of hair caught on his eyelashes. It was almost real. It was always almost real.

             He slipped into the lonely office. He crossed the marble floor. It was almost over. He would kill and he would wake and he would forget and he would kill and wake the next day and it had been so long since he'd said the right words and thought the right thoughts so if this was divine retribution for every bullet and every bottle then he only wished the arbiter of his purgatory had a more varied palate.  

            The switchblade snapped open in his hand. Broad shoulders slumped over the desk. Gold fanned over his hands. It was almost over.

            He stepped behind him. The blade hovered at his throat. It was almost over.

            Tension coiled in his arm. His shoulders hunched into the coming swing. It was almost over.

            His other hand braced itself in his hair. He watched the gleam of moonlight on the man's hands as his hair fell away from the metal hand. It was almost

            Levi stared. There was no metal hand.

             _Where's the metal arm-_

            The city rose.

_Where's the metal fucking arm-_

            The air rippled. The air popped. The earth swallowed them whole.

            He untangled himself from the still-sleeping commander and backed into a bookcase as the library crumpled into place like the wing of a dollhouse in the hands of a child eager to get on with the next scene before rearranging the dolls.

            Levi nearly dropped the blade as feeling returned to his hands and his arms. He rounded the desk with sirens in his ears and needles in his eyes and his eyes caught on the revised silhouette of Erwin's ear and Foley's face returned to him like the flare of a struck match. His finger twitched against the blade's handle.

            He had locked up the knives. He had destroyed the fucking key. Levi traced the contours of the blade in his hands. It was a letter opener. Erwin's letter opener. He didn't remember taking it.

            A drop of blood burst on his hand. His lip stung. He didn't remember biting it. He didn't remember anything.  

            He had to leave. The Survey Corps. The city. The country. He should have left months ago. He should have left the moment he found that face in his scope. He should have left the second the reticle split that knowing smile.

            He will serve the rest of his sentence in this hole and he will be released and he will disappear. He will be a wanted man and a traitor, but Erwin will live. They will hunt him, but Erwin will live.

            It was no heroism on his part, no noble sacrifice. If he cared for more than his own skin, he surely he would have mentioned that he doesn't remember passing a day in Erwin's company that didn't end with his death. He was selfish and he was too slow and he had almost been too late.

            Levi sank the letter opener to the hilt into the desk and Erwin jumped at the splintering crack and before the man could blink the sleep from his eyes, Levi suggested a cane to go with those glasses he'll need if he won't stop mistaking the desk for a bed, voiced his unwillingness to play chiropractor in the morning, and left.

            He chained the boiler room shut behind him. Another chain rattled as he wound it over his wrists. He punched Isabel's birthday into one number lock, and Farlan's in another.

            Levi timed his sleep to when the commander was most awake, most alert. If it happened again, if he slipped out of the chains and out of the room, it wouldn't happen quietly. Erwin would have a chance.

            Levi whittled his sleep down to three hours a day.

            On the fourth night, the assassin killed the mark.

            Erwin thanked him for the tea. Levi moved the mess of papers aside to set it down. He glanced at the drafts, wandering over the circled, bolded, underlined notes in the margins and the sure, thick lines crossing out the odd misplaced word. Maybe it was a question of terminology. Language.

            A killer and a target. An assassin and a mark. Levi should have never dignified either with a name. If he was damned to watch his dead ringer slay another's from his own eyes every night for the rest of his life, so be it. But he will have this one, this only, resistance.

            He wasn't the length of his hair. He wasn't the scars on his back or the syllables in his name. He was his promise to the Survey Corps, to Erwin Smith.

            It hit him then. He couldn't leave. He couldn't snap the single tether that parted his soul from this assassin's.

            Their international outposts were criminally understaffed. Levi didn't have to leave the Survey Corps. But he had to leave Erwin.

            Before he left the library, he realized why Erwin's handwriting had changed. He held the pen in his left hand.

             On the fifth night, the assassin killed the mark.

             He hissed as the chains clanked away. Welts bloomed on his wrists. Levi touched the oak in the painting again. The only other spot of green in The Ring was in his tea.

            They ate separately that day.

            On the sixth night, Levi didn't sleep.

His nails carved crescents in his bloodless palms as icy water thudded into his numbing back. His breathing was either too fast or too slow. His nape burned. His eyes burned. He would have been cooler bathing in titan blood.

            Erwin hadn't been himself. The vision fucked with his head. Levi should have slapped his hand away. He should have pushed him away. He should have woken him sooner. He should have and he should have and he hadn't.

             It was the lingering vestiges of the vision that moved Erwin's hand and parted his lips. The vision had painted another face on Levi's. The vision fooled Erwin. The vision let him see what he wanted to see. Erwin had never looked at him like that. Erwin would have never looked at him like that.

             Levi was the stitches in his ear. He was the purpling, yellowing, blackening skin over his fractured ribs. His resume split Erwin's palm and his job interview glided under his jaw as barely-there, all-too-much there whitening scars. Erwin would never look at him like that.

            Levi brought him his tea with the usual sugar, at the usual time, in the usual place. He swiped a finished draft and marked suggestions on his formations. Erwin put his nauseatingly acute perception to use and said nothing of it.

            It never happened.

            Levi perched on the couch opposite and watched Erwin pick up the cup with his left hand. His nape burned.

            On the seventh night, the mark killed the assassin.

            Occasionally, the mark played the part of the wolf, and the assassin, the lamb.

            He woke on the floor. His wrists bruised and bled. The chair had been flung across the room. He didn't remember.

            Levi let the blood run. He let this testament to his small victory pool into the cradle of his palms a moment longer.

            He washed up and unrolled his sleeves to cover the marks. He knew Erwin noticed the change. He said nothing.

            On the eighth night, the assassin dropped into a chair.

             He crossed his feet where they landed on the polished desk. Moonlight glanced on the white tulips strewn across it.

            The same iron sky. The same prostrate city. The same glass walls.

            Footsteps. Chatter behind the door. The assassin didn't move. He didn't hide. Levi would have frowned if he could. He knew the scene, but the actor was off-script. He was exposed.

            The door opened and shut. A lock clicked. Levi heard a too-familiar hum. He heard a too-familiar voice.

            "I didn't take you for a romantic."

            The assassin sneered.

            "Sina's," he said, nodding at the flowers. "Moneybags has a sense of humor."

            "Does she?"

            It was a whisper, but the rumble carried across the room and into his bones and it was real, it was almost real. Moonlight pooled into the man's eyes as he drew nearer, as the shadows parted their veil. They had never been so blindingly white.

            The mark plucked a single tulip from the pile with a gloved hand.

            "'Toss these on the corpse', she said," the assassin sneered.

            The mark - and that was all he was and no more, no matter the cut of his jaw or the rebellion of that single strand that always caught on his brow  - turned the stem in his hand.

            "They're beautiful." The mark traced the dew rimmed petals.

            "They're hers."

            "Thank you-"

            "I just said-"

            "-for coming to me."

            He assassin shrugged. "We had an agreement."

            "So cold," the mark chided with a smile, and Levi wanted to turn away from the curve of it, from the hint of teeth. He lifted the tulip into the light. Its shadow rippled across the slope of his nose and the twitch at his brow.

            The assassin's feet dropped from the desk.

            "What's with that face?"

            The mark rounded the desk and gave him the tulip.

            "They're more cream than white," he said distantly.

            The assassin tossed it with the rest.

            "Picky bastard. So what?"

            The mark turned away. He approached the broad windowpanes behind them with echoing steps. They shuddered against a buffet of wind. The assassin rose and joined him. His eyes drifted to the mark's gloved hands as they clasped behind his back.

            The mark had never worn gloves. Levi didn't know why that mattered or how he was even sure. He wasn't a glove enthusiast. He didn't have opinions on the right seam, the best trim. But he knew. The mark had never worn gloves.

            "Yellow for friendship," the mark said.

            His back was turned. His hands were free. He was unarmed. They were alone. The assassin wasn't reaching for a blade. He wasn't angling for a gun.

            "Red for love."

            The door was locked. There was a ventilation shaft on his right. There was a staircase to his left. He could kill. He could flee. He didn't.

            "White, well, white has several meanings, few of which Madam Sina intended for me, I'm sure. The funeral's color, I suppose."

            Maybe the assassin was stalling. Maybe he had a partner. Maybe a windowpane was unscrewed. Maybe there was a trigger wire.

            "And cream-"

            The assassin stiffened. A fingernail trailed along his spine. Levi had lost sight of the mark. He was behind him, them, now, and his back arched and his hands curled.

            "-for commitment."

            Familiar patterns burned into his nape. A tremor danced on his spine. The leather swept into his hair and the assassin's eyes drifted shut.

            A single misplaced breath, and his head rolled. A blink, and his heart wept onto pavement. The dreams did not record successes but attempts. The dreams ended in a death, but it didn't care whose. So Levi let this imbecilic third-rate hitman shut his eyes and he would have laughed but all he could do was wait. At least it was almost over. 

            Something pressed into his nape. It was almost over. Levi waited for the bang, the cut, the black. It was almost over.

            Something pressed into his nape and then his neck and then his jaw again, and again, and again.

            It was too warm for a barrel's kiss, too soft, too pliant.  It wasn't the pinch of a blade. Warm breath fanned over his jaw and teeth closed on the rim of his ear and Levi ran out of excuses.

            "What will you tell her?" the mark murmured in his ear. A hand rose to cage his neck.  

 

_"I'm moving up," Erwin murmured, hands gliding over the slope of his shoulders. For a fleeting moment, they closed loosely around the column of his neck, and a savage thought struck Levi. It was the sibling of the sly, intrusive voice that suggests leaping from a dizzying height, the brief shock in the fingertips as they squeeze the wheel near a passing car, squeeze so they don't dare swerve of their own volition and splay the heart across the windshield. He thought, as Erwin's hands hovered over the frantic drum of his beating heart and closed just so, he thought, how simple it was to squeeze. From the way Erwin's breath rattled out of him at the half-touch, Levi wondered if he had shared the thought._

 

            "What else?" the killer murmured back. "That you were a slippery shit."

            "She won't pay you."

            The assassin traced the seam of the gloved hand at his throat. The hand squeezed and his chin rose and he opened his heartbeat to mouth and leather and teeth.

            "I don't need her money," he sighed.

            "She only trusts as far as her money can travel, and no further," the mark said and he said it like he wanted to pick the assassin apart to the bone and Levi wanted to hear Erwin like this and he knew he would never hear Erwin like this. "I need her to believe she has death itself in her employ."

            The assassin turned in his arms, slipped a finger through Erw- the mark's tie, and walked them back. "I'll be convincing," he said with a hard shove. The mark fell into the chair and Levi's play at indifference ended when the assassin slid into his lap like he was made for it.

            Levi hunted desperately for a contradiction. It had worked for Erwin. It will work for him. It had to work for him.

            He could forget Manitoba. He could forget the chill of metal knuckles on his lips, forget the lights playing on a too-familiar face wearing a too-unfamiliar expression, forget the half-smile aching to ruin, to be ruined. But it would not forget him. And he would not forget this.

            The killer's hands were his hands and his voice was his voice. He glanced at what else he could use of the assassin's body to his end as he rocked his, their, hips. The mark sighed, and Levi realized he had been looking at the wrong man.

            He recalled every aborted touch, each averted look, and his vision swam. It was working.

            He disgusted Erwin, or else unsettled him deeply. It didn't poison them professionally. Not even interpersonally. But something magnetized the space between them and pried them apart should they wander too close and Levi didn't want to care but now that unknown will save him. The air shuddered. His bones hummed. It was working.

             The Survey Corps was a family. Two agents from opposite ends of the earth may not know the other's station or even their name but they knew they had a home across the ocean, the town, the sea. They had a home in anyone who bore the Corps' name. He saw one in his recruits, in Hange, even in Mike. Sound rumbled as if underwater. White stars ruptured in his eyes. They blinded him. It was almost over.

            But not in Erwin. Levi was no family to him. He was a hired gun. He was a trigger. He had always been a trigger.

            It should have been the finishing thought.

            Instead, the fog cleared and he heard every sigh and saw every blonde strand and he felt the oaths mouthed on his neck as if they were for him and when the mark touched him with something like reverence, Levi almost believed that this animal heartbeat was his own. He almost wanted to believe.

            He had been dishonest. Erwin would not have trusted just any hired gun to train his most vulnerable agents. Refugees. Families of the slain. Prisoners of war.

            He would not have taken him into his inner circle. He would not have trusted a hired gun with his most ambitious campaign.

            Erwin would not have bothered to dig the city out of his back. He would not have remembered to scrub his hands to the bone to humor his petty anxieties. He would not have trusted a hired gun to draw him out of his visions. He wouldn't have trusted a trigger with his soul.

            Levi heard the snap of a switchblade.

            "I'll tell her," the assassin said, dragging the tip of the blade from collar to chin, "the chase dragged on," the blade rose, coaxing the mark to bare his neck, "and on," it curved over his jaw, "and on." The blade parted the mark's lips and. He flicked the flat of it with his tongue. A white thread followed the blade across the curve of his lips and melted as soon as it rose.

            The assassin replaced the blade with his lips. The mark pulled him flush.

            It was all wrong. They moved as if light-dappled photographs smothered the walls and salty air scratched at old floors. The kettle was boiling and the dog was chasing seagulls and they moved like they were at once too old and too young. He couldn't tell whose hum rumbled between them, and when his eyes shut, he couldn't tell one from the other at all.

            The assassin pulled away and murmured against his lips, said "I can just give her your head."

            A smirk played on the mark's lips. It left too quickly. The assassin saw it, and his smirk fell too. Neither had moved and yet the air became suffocating. He pinched the mark's right glove and the mark swallowed.

            "Or your arm."

            He pulled. He didn't watch it come off. He watched the mark. The man didn't meet his eye. He looked straight ahead and there was too much in that face for Levi to decipher, too much violence and too much adoration and too much fear. The assassin looked down.

            Leather dragged past blackened necrotic flesh. The assassin lifted the hem before giving up and sliding the blade through several layers of increasingly expensive sleeves from wrist to shoulder. The mark didn't stop him. He didn't speak. Black and purple threaded like frozen smoke into the curve of his elbow, carved into his bicep and inched into his shoulder. Track marks chased dark, collapsed veins.

            The assassin's hand strained with the effort to resist moving the arm lest it crumble in his hands. Levi felt the bastard child of fear and shame pool in his gut. He couldn't tell whose it was. He couldn't tell who he was.

            The mark's other hand rose to his shoulder. "It was the only wa-" The assassin flinched away from the touch.

            "Levi."

            The assassin didn't look away from the hand. The fingers were impossibly gaunt. The skin blistered and cracked as if wound sloppily around the bone.

            He tensed as the mark rubbed his shoulder. 

            "Levi."

            The name was a hymn on his lips but it went unheard. The assassin stared at the arm. His eyes wandered over the curve of his joints. They mapped the bloodless skin.

            "It worked."

            The mark's other hand shot to his hair and the assassin flinched again but the touch was soft and irritation bloomed in his, their, gut because they wanted him to yell and to indict but of course Erwin understood and of course the mark understood.

            "The cure worked."

            The words swam in his ears. This didn't happen. This wasn't supposed to happen.

            Hunt. Aim. Shoot.

            Hunt. Aim. Be shot.

            The dreams had a rhythm. A formula. Levi may as well have been catching a favorite show every evening except it wasn't his favorite and it was catching him and maybe he should have been more disturbed that Erwin's deaths weren't shocking anymore but he had seen the reruns' reruns and the punchlines were stitched into his ears and hollowed in his eyes but this was different. This was too long. Too precise. Too real.

            "It's over, Levi."

            The assassin wasn't stalling. No one stalled like this. No one stalled by immortalizing that carcass of an arm into his memory as if he himself had squeezed each cell and strangled every vein.  He didn't know why shame drained the assassin even as it filled him to the tips of his fingernails and the ends of his lashes but Levi knew the rattlesong of painkillers and the curdling purples of bruises like oil spills and this body was his again, this Levi was him again.

            "It's over," the mark murmured like a prayer, like a song, "It's over."

            A strand caught on the leather glove as he carded through his hair. The mark brought his gloved hand to his mouth and meant to slip it off with his teeth. The assassin yanked the hand away and took it off for him. He took the healthy hand in his and pressed the fleshy, calloused palm and rolled a knuckle with his thumb. The mark pulled away and lifted his chin.

            The assassin hadn't taken his eyes off the dead limb.

            "Look at me."

            Levi felt his flare of irritation.

            "Levi."

            And they looked. The world spun as the assassin shook his head.

            "I was too late - if I was there-" he started and the mark shook his head almost violently and his lips moved but Levi couldn't hear it past the litany of  _too late and too slow_.

            The titan had been injured. Slashed tendons. Splintered skull. He was so sure he would rise in time. He was so sure he had made the right choice. The titan had been injured and Foley had been jumpy and his eyes were a desperate man's eyes and Levi's hand had inched toward his gun and he didn't draw and he didn't aim because he had been paralyzed by the single fear that one hundred and fifty three nights of muscle memory would possess him to aim not at Neil Foley but Erwin Smith.

            His finger twitched.

            The assassin's eyes darted to the hand. Levi felt the rising tempo in his, their, chest. He tried to move. It twitched again. He couldn't quite make a fist. But he could move. Levi could move.

            The assassin lifted his, their, hand.

            "He's here," he muttered. Levi didn't see a third face or hear the creak of a door and he didn't care. He could move. He could finally fucking move.

            "It's too early," the mark said a little breathlessly.

            " _He's here_."

            Something passed between them without words, without gestures.

            The assassin stood and dragged a second chair to face the mark. Nameless faces appeared in the dreams before, each one as forgettable as the last, but Levi still heard no knock, no other sound. He kept curling and uncurling the finger, and a few more began to twitch. He could move.

            The assassin sat in the chair.

            He laid the incriminating hand on the mark's left. Levi continued his efforts to curl every finger but the middle.

            "Леви."

             _Levi._

No. He had misheard.

            "Коснись моей руки-"

             _Tap my hand-_

            The moon shied behind a cloud. Only the city lit them now.

             "-если ты меня слышишь,"

             _-if you can hear me._

            The mark looked at the assassin and he looked beyond him. He squinted slightly, as if looking for something, someone.

            This never happened. This wasn't supposed to happen. The actors are not supposed to look him in the eye. They're not supposed to know his name.  Levi wanted to laugh and he wanted to disappear.

            It was a dream. It was just a dream. Levi tapped.

            The mark swallowed thickly and looked at the assassin, at Levi, as if seeing him for the first time. He followed the curve of his jaw and the shape of his lips. His breathing quickened. His eyes shined. 

            "Ты раньше видел меня? Когда-либо? Коснись один раз, если да, два если нет."

             _Have you seen me before? Ever? Tap once if yes, twice if not._

Levi hesitated. The arm was still flesh, not the titanium he had seen once before, and the assassin's handler was some Sina, not the Rose from the dream in Manitoba, the closest he could call a likeness.

            The mark watched the tremor in the uncertain finger. He asked that he tap three times if he was unsure. Levi tapped three times.

            The mark sighed and he had a schoolboy's giddiness in his smile and an old man's desperation in his eyes.

            "Прости меня, это вряд ли важно. Tолько так я мог с тобой связаться. Выравнивать наши стороны это кошмар-"

             _Forgive me, that's hardly important now. This is the only way I could reach you. Aligning our sides is a nightmare-"_

            Levi drilled a hole in his hand with his tapping. The mark watched, then smiled softly and apologized for the word choice.

The assassin inhaled sharply. "I'm crossing. He's not alone," he said breathlessly. "He's gonna wake him. He's-"

            "Don't speak to him, not a word," ordered the mark. With a new urgency, the mark squeezed his hand, effectively silencing him.

            "Ты страдал достаточно долго. Времени мало - найди красную цаплу. Скажи ей, что ты галка. Она -"

             _You've suffered enough. There isn't time - find the red egret. Tell her you're the jackdaw. She-_

"Hurry," the assassin breathed. The mark's, Erwin's, face swam in his eyes. The air thinned. He couldn't breathe.

            "Все это скоро закончится. Cкоро-"

             _This will all be over soon. Soon-_

            The air shuddered. He was suffocating. As he struggled to fill his protesting lungs, a savage sting erupted at his nape and he was splitting apart and he was drowning.

            He cried out and his body tensed like a wire snapped taut before releasing all at once. His eyes had slid shut but his wrists ached and the boiler room hummed and the floor was cold beneath him. It was over. He opened his eyes, and the mark stared back.

            It was over. It was supposed to be fucking over. He thrashed, but the mark drew back and he said something and Levi refused to hear it. He couldn't hear any more. He yanked his hands up to cover his ears  but the chain links snapped taut  and grinded into torn flesh and his wrists screamed.

            "Леви."

             _Levi._

            He shut his eyes as he decided he hated the sound of his own name and wondered if the next thing he saw would be white sleeves and a padded room.

            "Levi."

            Hands were on him. They were on his shoulders. They were on his hands. It was almost over. His drooping sleeves were drawn back. He heard a sharp inhale, but it wasn't his. He didn't care. It was almost over.

            "It's April 25th, 2091-"

            It was almost over.

            "You've been in a safe house for seven days-"

            It was almost over.

             "-and you're leaving today. Your name is Levi."

            He curled that one finger. Levi jumped as three more followed suit. He opened his eyes and watched himself curl his hands into fists again and again and his mouth fell open and he had never had more control.

            He thought of Foley. His finger twitched.

            And there it went. There went that barest flicker of agency, of his will. He hated that finger. He wanted it gone. It was defective. It didn't obey. He thought of the metal arm. He should ask the mark if his engineer took requests. 

            "Levi, look at me."

            "Иди к черту."

             _Go to hell._

            His mouth had moved on its own and the words had been in his head but he didn't mean to spill them into the air. He wanted his mouth gone too. Maybe if he replaced every slow, defective, broken part of him, Erwin would live. Maybe if he was perfect, Erwin would live.

            A thumb grazed his chin, feather-light. It troubled the stubble there and Levi couldn't remember when he'd last shaved. He had locked up the razors.

            "It's April 25th, 2091. You've been in a safe house for seven days and you're leaving today. You will leave today. Your name is Levi."

            The hand closed on his chin and lifted. The ear was a beacon in his periphery. Levi tore his gaze from a far wall and traced the mangled contour of the pierced shell and he was truly degenerate to only be able to tell one man from another by which pieces of them he had stolen.

            "Look at me, Levi."

            Levi looked with all the intention of sparing him half a glance and no more but the harsh, artificial light muddled them both and it should have muddied that blue but it spilled hot into his eyes and they looked like the sea.

            Levi's nape ached. He palmed at the twin barbells.

            "I'm sorry," Erwin started, and Levi murmured Erwin's name, soundlessly, as if to confirm it was real, that he was real.

            "I might have pulled too-"

            "Erwin," Levi muttered, and he wished he hadn't said a word because sleep had grated his voice and it could have scratched steel and Erwin nearly smiled anyway.

            Erwin reached for the lock. Levi swatted him away. It took three tries for the tremors to let him find the right numbers and he wondered why Erwin's face softened and then he wondered why he wondered because of course Erwin would know Isabel's birthday; Erwin knew his secretary's anniversary and each courier's favorite song and Levi dared not ask if Erwin could recite the last wills of all the agents and all the soldiers they'd ever buried because Erwin would clear his schedule.

            Levi stood. He didn't remember kicking the chair away in his sleep. He didn't remember crumpling, doll-like, to the ground. He didn't remember anything. He flinched away from Erwin's steadying hands. The right was faster to fall back to his side. Levi imagined it withered and dead and blackened by some unnamed fluid in an unnamed demonstration for some unnamed board and he looked up and the mark looked back and it was too much and he had to leave.

            The chains clattered off his arms and he saw that the cuffs were folded back over the hastily wound gauze on his mangled wrists.

            "Time?" Levi asked.

            Levi felt eyes on him as he opened the lock barring the front door and dragged away the chain.

            "Morning. Ten to six."

            "When?"

_When will this be over? When will it end?_

The mark watched him.

            "Noon."

            Levi kicked the door open. The mar- Erwin rose from his knees.

            "Levi," he called, but he had already left.

            Levi had caught sight of the opened side-door as he left the boiler room. Erwin had looked for him. He had looked for him for the first time in eight days. Maybe he had had enough. Maybe he knew. Maybe he knew everything. Levi tore through one room, then another, then a third. He found the painting again. He found the oak. He scratched it off.

            Levi set the kettle to boil and stormed through the pantry with a throat like granite. He knew what he wanted wasn't there, but he needed the satisfaction of slamming the cupboards to prove it. Isabel would have yelled at him. Farlan would not have let him out of his sight for days.

            The kettle boiled. A few drops landed on his hands as he poured and they hissed and he let them.

            "Six years. Three months. Two days," he murmured. He rested his head against the cold wall. "Six years. Three months. Two days. Six years-" He didn't want to hear his own voice anymore. He didn't want to remember his burning throat. He didn't want to see the lights playing on the bottle.

            "Six years-" He stopped. It was beginning to sound like a curse, like a regret.

            He let the tea steep too long. He left one bitter cup for himself and resteeped the other. He counted the seconds.

            He brought the tea to the usual place at the usual time. He kicked the library door shut out of habit. There was no one to shut out. Erwin put his pen down. His eyes darted left briefly, as if anticipating Levi's move to the couch as he had seven times before. Levi didn't move.

            "Transfer me."

            Erwin blinked. His brow descended, and his head tilted the way it did when he pretended to mishear.

            "Bahamas, Siberia, the moon, I don't care. Transfer me."

            Every second of Erwin's silence was another that shot adrenaline into his limbs and Levi wondered why no titan had ever wired his nerves so hot.

            Erwin put the pen down.

            "Levi, I try to be accommodating-"

            He spoke like every word was vetted by specialists. Each pause was analyzed by focus groups and every inflection underwent years of testing and Levi's nails carved hollows into his palms.

            "-but I can't go on ignoring what's in front of me. It's irresponsible. It isn't fair to the Survey Corps. It isn't fair to you-"

            "Just say it. Which one?"

            "Which one?"

            "Yeah, which one? Is it Mason's? Intermipol's? Or you startin' me off with something light, like State Medical's? I'm not a loony bin connoisseur," he sneered, "so I have no preference."  

            Erwin stared. He didn't freeze, exactly. He leaned back and braced himself on one elbow and anyone else might have bought it but Levi had never seen a move more robotic and he thought he saw the blink of moonlight on titanium and suddenly it was too cold and too hot.

            "That isn't it at all."

            "Then what?"

            "I only meant to say, given the recent-"

            "Stop," he seethed through gritted teeth. "Stop talking like I'm made of fucking glass-"

            "I was afraid."

            Levi had never heard him out of breathe in so few words. Levi rolled the word around in his mind. Afraid. He put it next to Erwin, and it didn't belong. It didn't fit. He must have misheard.

            "You were what?"

            "I was afraid of just this. I thought if I was overbearing, if I wanted too much, too soon, you would resist. And you would have had every right to-"

            "So you gave me some fuckin' room, big shit- I mean, big deal.  Just tr-"

            "No. I ignored you."

            "I didn't ask you to be my shrink."

            "I wasn't even your friend," Erwin said, and the mask that was in moments machine-like and at moments like stone, began to chip, began to crack, and Levi saw something like regret.  "And I let my own-" He swallowed thickly.

            "I shouldn't have prolonged that vision. I shouldn't have put you in danger-"

            "You shouldn't have trusted me, you mean."

            Erwin rose and rounded the desk and he looked almost angry. "No, no-" 

            "Forget it," Levi said, stepping back as Erwin stepped forward. "Transfer me."

            "No."

            "Erwin, think for a fucking second why I would have locked myself up," Levi whispered, though there was no one else to hear. "I'm a fucking liability. I've been nothing but a liability."

            Erwin took a step to the right and Levi realized that he had been positioning him, that he was guiding him and it was probably such second nature that Erwin himself might not have noticed. Erwin had moved until his back saw two windowless, doorless walls and until Levi had his choice of either door, had his exit, had his escape. Even then, Erwin gave him a choice.

            And the moment the thought came to him, Levi couldn't forget it the way he couldn't forget Manitoba or Neil Foley or that titanium arm. Levi was still standing. He was still there. He had already chosen. It was Erwin who hadn't.

            "You're under unbelievable stress-" Erwin said, and he stepped forward, but it was a farce. He stepped forward but Levi knew he would stop. He would yield to that wall that Levi couldn't understand and couldn't see and Erwin would avert his eyes and lock his arms and he would look again like a man caged and insist the bars were there, were really, really there.

            Levi stepped forward.

            "Transfer me."

            "The film-"

            Levi stepped forward. Erwin stopped mid-step.

            "After the film."

            Levi stepped forward. Erwin's weight shifted to his other foot.

            "The fallout-"

            "After the fallout."

            Levi stepped forward. Erwin stepped back.

            "The Survey Corps-"

            "I'll still serve. Somewhere else. You just won't see me," Levi said, and stepped forward. Erwin stepped back. "You won't hear from me," and Levi stepped forward, and Erwin's back met the wall, "and I won't hear from you," and Levi stepped forward and looked up.

            Levi watched Erwin's face and he knew that look and he knew he would be hearing some pre-tested, committee-approved, painstakingly edited bullshit if Levi didn't stop, so Levi didn't stop.

            "Is it New York? You think only New York deserves me?"

            "No."

            "Is it my connections? You thirsty for another chopper? A tank, maybe?"

            "No," he said and that look was chipping off and there was something in his eyes and Levi wanted it out of his mouth so he pressed farther and he bent the bars harder.

            "Is it Farlan? Isabel? Morale?"

            His hands had found their way into Erwin's shirt and he didn't remember when but he liked them there. They were cold. They were always cold but Erwin was a furnace and now they were a little less so.

            Erwin breathed out. Levi's hands sunk into his chest from the depth of it.

            "Okay."

            Levi blinked. "What?"

            "If it's what you think is best. I'll approve it."

            Reading his suspicion, Erwin added, "I'm afraid doing it before the film drops would be a logistical nightmare. The second it hits the air, you're free."

             _Forgive me, that's hardly important now. This is the only way I could reach you. Aligning our sides is a nightmare-_

            Erwin watched Levi's eyes glaze over and he groaned. "I'm sorry. That was a poor choice of words."

             _The mark watched silently, then smiled softly and apologized for the word choice._

            Levi tightened his hands in his shirt. Erwin. Erwin Smith. This was Erwin Smith. The buttons strained.

            "That's it? Just like that?"

            "Just like that."

            Levi should have been satisfied. He won. Erwin was safe. But those arms were locked and Erwin looked away and the bars were bending back and there were so many now that he could hardly see him anymore and he was tired of it, tired of all of it.

            Exhaustion hit first. Then hunger. Then it took three tries for his ragged throat to swallow.

            "Levi?"

            His head was a boulder. He leaned forward and made Erwin take the weight and he didn't care that the commander didn't know what to say or what do with his hands.

            Levi's hands uncurled and he braced them flat against his chest where he knew the bruises were lightest and he meant to push back. He meant to leave.

            A hand rose to his hair. Another wrapped around his shoulders and they squeezed and he was trapped and he had never wanted to be trapped but now he wasn't sure.

            "Dumbass," he muttered against his chest. "You're hurting yourself." Levi huddled his shoulders and tucked his arms away from his bruised ribs but Erwin smothered what little space he made and it hurt him, Levi knew it did. Levi stopped short of pinching his shoulder to unlock the hold when Erwin's breath troubled his hair and it sounded like a litany of " _Прости меня_.  _Прости меня_." He didn't remember when Erwin had monopolized his own language and made every word of it out of his mouth sound at once like something sacred, and something that was for him alone.

            Erwin drew away and said something about breakfast but Levi didn't hear. Erwin moved toward the door and spoke over his shoulder as if expecting Levi to follow. He returned when he realized he hadn't and Erwin squeezed his shoulders and led him to the kitchens with a hand warming the small of his back and Levi almost wanted to count how many of these little transgressions Erwin had made in the span of an hour.

            The kitchens were chrome dungeons and the dining hall was a sterile tomb so they brought the food and drink to the library. Erwin had mentioned that he liked it there, that the books breathed.

            "Do you need a personal guard?" Erwin asked over the clink of a fork.

            Levi set his emptied plate on the desk and fell into the couch. Erwin never asked why Levi ate each meal as if it would run if he breathed between bites.

            "That some american euphemism for babysitter?"

            Erwin hummed as he chewed, as if Levi had given him something to think about. Levi watched his right hand sit uselessly on his thigh.

            "He's left handed," Levi said. He wasn't sure why he said it.

            Erwin looked up.

            "You're- you. In your... the..." Levi sighed. "Fuck."

            Erwin looked at his own hand and blinked. Sheepishly, he switched the fork to his right.

            He shrugged at Levi's frown. "I don't notice it. There's a point where I - he - needs to make more use of his left."

            Panic lanced through Levi. They're the same. Their dreams are the same.

            "Why?"

            Erwin had dreamt it too. He knew. He sat there and he knew and Levi hadn't even considered it and he could swear all the blood in his head had rushed to his ears.

            "It was bitten off."

            Maybe not.

            Erwin gazed at the far wall as if looking beyond it. "They're so much larger," he murmured. "That five meter was nothing. In mine, the-"

            "Stop."

            Erwin blinked.

            "I don't care."

            Erwin hummed at that. Levi didn't like that knowing look. Erwin rose, winced at a pinch in his back, and stretched. His shirt rose over the his bruised skin and the colors rode over the curve of his hip and it was beautiful and it was terrible.

            He leaned against the desk. "I won't ask you to reciprocate," he said, and he looked like he meant it. "Not now."  

            "I said I don't care."

            Erwin's mouth twitched and Levi hated it. He shouldn't have brought it up. He could write his notes and wipe his ass with his left foot for all he cared. Levi took the plates and turned to go.

            "I want you to stay."

            He heard the words, but they weren't right. They didn't fit. He turned. Erwin's face hadn't changed, but there was a stiffness about him, as if he feared he would shatter if he moved.

            "Why?"

            "Because I'm selfish. Because we work well together. Because you've been standing between me and the reaper."

            Levi scowled. "Is there a Panacea-sized hole in your memory?"

            Erwin chanced a smile. "Would anyone forget being saved from a beast in one second and an assassin, the next?"

            Saved _._

            Erwin had the decency to lose the grin at Levi's scowl. Levi's mouth tripped over the litany he'd been repeating, rehearsing, reliving for seven days:

            "I left. I left the fucking roof. I didn't pull my gun in time. I'm-"

             _I'm the one killing you. I've been killing you every night for the past five months and I've seen the color of your heart and the inside of your skull and I've heard your last breath again and again and again._

            "I was too late," Levi said simply.

            Erwin didn't speak. The purgatorial silence rang in Levi's ears.

            "Levi," Erwin said finally, carefully, "Beckert's shot decapitated that five-meter but it didn't kill it. It would have regrown in seconds. You killed it. You weren't too late. And if-"         

            "Lift your shirt and say that again," Levi sneered. Erwin wore a cotton undershirt beneath the thin collared shirt, but the purple shadows bled through even so.

            "-If he'd gotten off a second shot-"

            "He shouldn't have gotten in a first."

            "You couldn't have known-"

            "Какова черта-" Levi exploded, "-fuck, why,  _why_ , have I been stationing guards every time you close your eyes or take a shit and  _why_  have I been tapping your every fucking call все это время- all this time? Я должен был знать," He saw red. He was moving, but he didn't know where. "I should have caught them. I should have fucking known- I should- Я-"

            He felt hands on his shoulders and Erwin was rooting him in place and Levi grabbed his wrists and pushed but Erwin wouldn't move so he squeezed and he knew it hurt but Erwin wouldn't move.

            "Perfectionism is a luxury."   

            "Fuck you."

            "And an impossible ideal."

            "What fucking use am I если я не- if I'm not-" His mouth wouldn't move. It wouldn't let him say it.

            A beat.

            "I forgive you."

            "What?"

            "I forgive you for not being omniscient. For not being able to leap in time and back again to tell me what the pie of the day will be at Lily's Bakery on the third Sunday in June."

            "Fuck you," Levi said, and added, "and that bakery. No wonder we're dead broke."

            "Then I'm sure you won't mind switching from those loose leaf teas-"

            "Yeah? Like you'll switch to decaf?"

            Erwin smiled. Levi liked it. It was sloppy and unrehearsed.

            The words made sense now. Almost.

            "What does that mean, then?" Levi asked. "What you said? Will you transfer me or not?"

            Erwin's pulse picked up where Levi's hands held his wrists where they connected to hands that still held his shoulders in another little transgression.

            Then Levi felt their weight loosen and his own grip tighten and he couldn't tell who held who.

            Erwin looked away. "More selfishness on my part. I only regret you weren't dealt a less sophomoric superior officer-"

             _Get to the point_  was on Levi's lips, but he held his tongue. Erwin's voice was a rough murmur and his too-long lashes framed shining, darting eyes and Levi couldn't have read this face before because he didn't know the language but he must have picked it up along the way because now he read  _nervous_.   

            "-I promised you," Erwin said. "You can leave-"

            "I will leave."

            "You will. You will," Erwin said, as if saying the words in that order for the first time. He looked at him. "I...would have regretted never telling you. That I w- prefer that you'd stay."

             If there one right combination of words in either language or any language that would tempt him to do just that, words tuned to the right inflection and humming between all the right sweeping gestures and elegant pauses, no one but Erwin Smith would come so close if Levi let him, if only Levi would let him.

            "I will leave," Levi said. His grip loosened and Erwin's hands fell, and Erwin was the fading warmth on his shoulders and the shadow of a heartbeat on his palms.

            "I know. I know."

            "You won't have to worry about that tea."    

            Erwin made a sound between a scoff and a laugh. "Or your wonderful personality."

            "Yeah? Try that website again. I'm sure it's got plenty of personalities."

            "I'm almost tempted. I thought I saw some engineering degrees-"

            "Fuck off. They're mail order brides."

            "Have you seen the economy?"

            "Have you seen the brides?"  

            Erwin smiled again and it was that same unguarded, unpracticed smile and Levi wondered if his strongest addictions were ahead of him.

            Levi shifted his weight to his other foot and something cracked beneath it. He looked down at the plates he didn't remember throwing against the floor.

            "Shit."

            "Leave it."

            Levi turned to get the broom. Erwin caught his arm.

            "Leave it."      

            He couldn't leave it. It was one more thing he didn't remember, one more thing slipping out of his control. He couldn't unshoot Foley's gun or unbruise his ribs or quiet the tremors in his arm but he can take a broom and a dustpan and do something, anything, and he told Erwin as much and Erwin's thumb glanced on his bandaged wrist as he let him go.

            He cleared the shards and then dusted the shelves and when that wasn't enough, he moved to the next room and the next room and the next room and it should have been enough but his throat was dry again and his head pounded again and he forgot how long he had been rubbing a hole in that cabinet when the hair at his nape stood up and fingertips wandered over his wrists.

            He heard a "May I?" and he didn't know what it meant but he nodded anyway. A clock's obnoxious ticking flooded the silence. The bandage unwound once. Tic. Twice. Tic. The angered skin began to show. Tic. The bandage fell. It was filthy. He had to pick it up. His hand was gently lowered. Tic. The rag was taken out of his other hand and the bandage unwound once. Tic. Twice. Tic. It fell to the floor. He had to pick it up. He bent to pick it up.

            "No."   

            He couldn't reach them. Someone held him in place. A flare of rebellion lit in his chest. He tried again.

            "No," he heard, harder, and the flame sputtered out. He stood, arms boneless. They weren't his anymore. All his bones and all his blood wasn't his anymore.

            The lights shifted and the floor moved and at some point, he had been sat down. His sleeves had been folded at the elbow. He heard running water.

            A basin was placed in front of him. The water sloshed. Scratches carved the metal at the bottom. The waves rippled one way, and they bloated. Another, and they shrank. There was movement in front of him and white noise in his ears, but he saw only the basin, only the steep, unreachable shores. Steam licked at each wave. He wondered when titan blood had become so clear.

             "- 25th, 209-"

            His arms were moved, and he let them. They weren't his to move. His hands hovered over the basin, braced by another's.

            "- in a safe house for-"

            They dropped. He flinched at the burn. They would melt, they would all melt, his hands and these other hands and they could never be pried apart and it didn't matter because they weren't his; neither were his.

            "-Your name is Levi-"

            His name was Levi and his blood curdled in the titan's and it coiled like smoke in the little sea.

            "-You've been in a safe house for seven days-"

            His name was Levi and he'd been in a safe house for seven days.

            Levi looked up. The mark watched him, and something had happened to his ear. Levi had happened to his ear. Levi was a killer. A hired gun. A trigger.

            "-ou're the strongest soul I know-"

            His name was Levi and he'd been in a safe house for seven days and this man thought he had a soul.

            "-ten to nine and we're going to get he-"

            Levi looked down, and the basin was gone. The mark leaned down and blew into his melting wrists. Maybe they'll melt to the shoulder. Maybe when he looked down again, he'll see titanium.

            "-It's April 25th, 2091. You've been in a safe house for seven days and-"    

            His wrists stung. The mark was rubbing them, rubbing something into them, and it stung, and Levi looked closer and there was no metal arm and no black arm and he looked up and it was Erwin.

            "It's April 25th, 2091. You've been in a safe house for seven days and you're leaving today. We're leaving today. Your name is Levi and its ten to nine and you deserved so much m-"

            Levi wanted to tell him that he was an idiot for cleaning the barrel of a gun by throwing it in water, and how useless was antibacterial cream for the flat of a blade. He thought of Foley.

            His finger didn't twitch.

            "-and you're the strongest soul I know-"

            Levi thought of him again, thought of every sunken plane of his face, every hair on his head.

            "-It's April 25th, 2091 and it's raining above ground-"

            His finger didn't twitch.

            "-so we should bring an u-"

            He moved it of his own will this time, and it curled. He ordered it to straighten, and it did.  A blade didn't give orders. A trigger doesn't have free will. But Erwin's ear was still gone and his sides still painted purple and Levi could chant it for the rest of his life and he wouldn't believe it.

            Levi watched Erwin's hands rise and fall. He had bandaged one hand. The other was nearly finished. Erwin moved to grab a pin and as his palm turned, the light caught the ridges of a white scar and Erwin was kneeling on earth tilled by giant feet and motorbike tires and titans were howling and Levi had threatened his life him with the same hands he had just washed and cleaned and wrapped.

            A trigger doesn't apologize. A blade doesn't regret.

            Erwin pinned the fresh bandage.

            "It's April 25th, 2091- "

            Levi took Erwin's hand in his.

            "You've been in a safe house for seven days-"

            He raised it to his lips.

            "-and y-you're..."

            Erwin stopped.

            For a moment, he only pressed his cold lips to the heat of that palm and as they warmed, he remembered how to purse them and when he did, he pressed them across the length of that white scar. He expected him to pull back. He waited for an awkward shift, a question, a frown, but when the fingers curled around his jaw and trailed circles on his neck, Levi opened his eyes and Erwin looked at him like he understood every word that hadn't come out of his mouth.

            Levi lowered his hand but he didn't give it back. He folded Erwin's sleeve and traced each white thread and the odd puckered bullet wound and as Erwin told him that story and every story, Levi counted his eyelashes and mapped each graying hair. He will never mistake him for the mark again.

            Erwin cleaned up and Levi shaved. He moved the razor to his neck and glanced at Erwin through the mirror.

            "Erwin."

            Erwin set the basin in the sink and looked up.

            "You gonna close the book on that adventure we had on the 23rd or should I?"

            A shadow passed over Erwin's face. His mouth opened and closed in half-starts.

            "Look, I get it," Levi said. The razor rasped against his jaw. "The vision fucked with your head and you thought you saw some ex-girlfriend or your dream wife or some shit, big deal."

            Erwin didn't speak. His face was unreadable. Levi shrugged.

            "Just don't want it hanging over us like some dangling shit."

            Erwin breathed, and it was just a little deeper than before. Maybe he didn't even remember. Maybe he had laughed it off the moment Levi had left.

            Levi swallowed. The razor nicked him.

            "Of course," Erwin said simply.

            Levi wiped the red bead. It bloomed into the cloth.

            Once he'd packed what little he had, Levi found Erwin in the library. His notes were stacked in a neat pile. Beside it was a bin and a lighter.

            "What was that about perfectionism?" Levi frowned.

            "Too sensitive to have on hand," Erwin said. The pages burned. Levi stared.

            "So all that work was pointless."

            Erwin pointed to his own head in answer as he tucked his things into his bag.

            "Bullshit. What were my notes on page nine?"

            "'Formation GYT too risky in cold temperatures," Erwin recited, "GYU needs flatter terrain. I'll pretend I didn't see GYR '."

            Levi masked his surprise in a scoff. "Ah, GYR," he said. "What did that stand for, Get Yourself Reamed?"

            "It might have been too ambitious..."

            As he packed, Erwin glanced increasingly at the console on his wrist. Levi angled the shutters of an air vent toward the smoke as the papers smoldered in the bin. Erwin glanced again at his console as Levi fell into the couch and listened to the crackle. The air rippled over the heat of the flame. Everything rippled. Everything was black. 

            Levi shuddered out of a nap. He heard a page turning. Erwin was reading beside him. The clock showed ten to twelve.

            "Tch."

            Erwin looked up.

            "I miss the normal dreams. Just had my head chewed off. It was nice."

            Erwin frowned.  

            Levi tsked. "You were supposed to laugh."

            Erwin's lip turned up a little, and then it was gone. "You and I have different 'normal's."

            "Speaking of things that aren't normal, you gonna tell me what happened downstairs?"

            "Downstairs?"

            "When you found me."

            He frowned at Erwin's pretense at ignorance. Levi drew one leg to his chest. "Was I speaking in tongues, juggling shit, what? Was anything off?"

            "Why would it be?"

            "Forget it." Levi shifted until his back faced Erwin, and though it was among the most petulant moves he could have made, it was no less satisfying. He heard the thump of a closing book.

            "I'll tell you later."

            Levi turned. Nothing could have sounded more ominous.

            "Now. Tell me now."

            Erwin didn't speak.

            Levi glared until his brows ached.

             "Your health is my priority, Levi."    

            "Don't change the-"

            "I heard you earlier in the pantry."

            Levi stared. His pulse quickened.

            "Fill me in, commander, 'cause I don't see what a drink of water's got shit to do with-"

            "Farlan told me."

            When Levi didn't speak, Erwin met his eye and said, "I could tell he didn't want to, but when he heard you were to go abroad without him or Isabel, he only said not to drink in front of you, that was it."

            He was going to kill Farlan.

            "Don't be hard on him," Erwin said.

            He was going to kill Farlan.

            "And this has  _what_  to do with my shitty twin?"

            Erwin straightened and turned to face him fully.

            "Do you trust me, Levi?"

            Levi saw the white scar in his periphery. His lips burned.

            "Don't ask stupid questions."

            Erwin looked distant. "One night, you lead recruits you trained for months and bury them come sunrise," he said softly. "You hunt a beast for days at a time and the trail disappears and there's nothing else to do but call it off. You look for the man who once told you what baseball team his wife roots for and you find a hand and you know it's his because you recognize the platinum band."

            Erwin looked at him now. Not at the memory of him or the idea of him but him as he was, there, beside him.

            "I threw you into the most densely scheduled and punishing series of operations most of our agents will ever see in their lives. And you took it. All of it. You survived in more ways than one. You nearly gave in only once because-"

            "I stopped it," Levi snapped.

            "It's not about the Halcion. It's not even the liquor. It's these dreams. They're getting worse."

            "I hadn't noticed," Levi said flatly.

            "There's only so much a person can take. I'm almost entirely convinced these visions and hallucinations are foul play, but I won't overwhelm my own agents to get my way. I won't let them lock up these traumas, throw away the key and wonder why they're rotting from the inside. I won't lose you again."

            "Again?"

            Erwin looked away. He rubbed the scar on his palm.

            "I thought if I let you clean, let you cope in your own way...There was nothing. You were gone."

            Levi looked away. He didn't want to see that look anymore.

            "Do you trust me, Levi?"

            Levi wondered when  _no_  became  _maybe_  became  _what a stupid question_. 

            "Yeah."

            "Then trust me to tell you when I know you're ready."

            Levi dug his nails into his arms. He made an affirmative sound and Erwin thanked him like he had just given him a gift.

            "We should have had a third," Erwin muttered as he glanced at his console.

            Levi frowned.

            "Someone to mediate. Someone free of these dreams to keep us grounded with none of this blind leading the blind nonsense. You shouldn't have been forced to take care of me-"

            "Shut up."

            "-it was unfair and you had too much t-"

            " _Shut up_ ," he said and he couldn't imagine why Erwin took one look at his face and laughed, really laughed.

            "Thank you, Levi. The amount of-"

            "Stop."

            "I couldn't have ever-"

            "Stop. You promised."

             _I will leave._

            Erwin nodded a touch too evenly.

            "I did. I did." 

 

            Sometime midday, they were graced by a resounding metallic knock at the central door.

            Levi rose and frowned. "What, they shove the key up their ass?"

            "It's locked from the inside."

             "Then unlock it," he said flatly.

            Erwin gestured to the console on his wrist. Levi watched a blinking red light. There was another knock. Louder.

            "Mike should have given me the green to confirm that it's safe to leave."

            "Safe to- why?"

            The PA system crackled. Levi hissed at the feedback whine.

            "Commander Erwin Smith of the Survey Corps and agent Levi - what do you mean, no surname-" the voice muttered away from the mic, then returned:

            "The International Military Police have warrants for your immediate arrests."

            Levi turned to the commander. He was smiling.

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As of this chapter, there's gonna be a huge gray area when it comes to what is purposefully or accidentally confusing as to who is who in certain scenes, so please please let me know if you're ever unsure.
> 
> Everyone who reads, leaves kudos, comments, you're the best. :*


	10. You Were Right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - She Reminds Me of You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKiWJlOtjrU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone had a nice hiatus. This is part one of a chapter that had to be broken up because I've learned my lesson with Panacea - the second half will be up in a week, I promise.

           

            "-early reports indicate that it may have been yet another alleged surveillance attempt by the highly suspect international paramilitary agency-"

            "-time to ask ourselves if it's even worth having them headquartered in one of our major-"

            "-I'm not saying the Survey Corps is a terrorist organization, but-"

            "Don't watch this."

            Mike shut Hange's office door, folder in hand. Hange looked up from the laptop as a panelist with cherry lipstick sweetly suggested prosecuting every member of the Survey Corps.

            Hange laughed. "Some higher up's gotta be spooked to start blabbing about us by name."

            "Don't w-"

            Hange snatched the bulky folder from his hands. Cherry Lips laughed. Hange was sure they'd seen her before. Mike took a seat beside them on the protesting couch as Hange shut the folder and caught the panelists disagreeing over the political leanings of Defense Secretary Dot Pixis' favorite barber. Mike rose, wound around the mountains of metal bits and ends and undimmed the lights. Pain prickled white behind their eyes.

            When he returned to the couch, Hange slapped the folder into his lap and returned the laptop to their own. "Beckert yap yet?"

            Mike stared. "You did not read this hundred page report in the time it took me to-"

            "You're right, Beckert'll probably only spill to Erwin but she's not gonna have much, she's expendable, I mean, trafficking titans through a major city, you gotta have an army just to-"

            "Hang-"

            "-so radicals are getting smarter or getting help and I think Intermipol knows they're on our shit list but the subway incident doesn't fit 'cause we've never seen Intermipol so sloppy so quickly so soon so they're desperate or cocky or gotten so crooked that -"

            "Hold on-"

            Hange's eyes snapped wide open. "I'm on TV."

            Mike turned to the screen where a three second security footage clip looped over studio audience murmur. A grainy Hange swayed again and again on the steps of the university that housed the Corps' labs, the very same they were in at the moment. Hange had gone outside, they recalled, gone up for some air for a second or two or three, hair slipping out of blue elastic, fingertips burned. Three months ago, maybe four. They counted tree ring blisters,  turned their hands to compare.

            "-our sources tell us - no Craig, I don't think she knows what a hairbrush looks like either - but from what we've been-"

            Mike reached for the power button. Hange slapped him away.

            "-could be responsible for this mess. Where was she? Such a high profile- my god, she's in the commander's inner circle and she's, what, kicking back in Fiji on this alleged "sabbatical" while the Survey Corps blows holes in a building in the middle of the city over, get this, "security concerns"?"

            "Now, Nancy, Intermipol said that in their press release and you know how they love to coddle them, but the Corps is mum as always, it's almost like-"

            "Let's put a pin in that, Dave, because I want to stay on this, this is the first we've seen of her and sources say this "Hange Zoe" is a riot, did you know she was kicked out of three universit-"

            The laptop was slammed shut. "Mike-" Hange whined, but they looked up and it was Moblit, all scarlet ears and wrinkled brow, hands white where they ground screen into keys. He rounded on Mike.

            "How could you let them watch this?"

            "I'm not a babysitter, Berner. If they want to watch this trash-"      

            "No no no, you don't understand-"

            "No," Mike said, standing, "I don't. I don't understand why the commander's been so relaxed with you two, you especially, Zoë. I came to deliver the Panacea report, which you," he said to Hange, "should have read two days ago. Do you even know where Erwin is? What happened on the ground? Do you-"

            "They got it wrong," Hange said, eyes on the laptop. "It was five."

 

            It had been as they clacked away at the sixth draft of their twenty-first grant proposal that Hange learned that they had been dismissed from one of most prestigious PhD programs in the continental United States. Within the hour, a second program called to inform them of the same. The third and fourth came the following morning as the sun rose and glanced on the energy drinks scattered across the sticky floor. The fifth simply shut down Hange's university email accounts.

            Hange was politely informed by representatives of the universities that ghost-writing material through five proxies to gain access to staff and laboratory materials for unapproved research wasn't entirely legal. One of their proxies had lost her nerve, botched her lines in an impromptu board meeting to discuss the research and couldn't improvise. She hadn't sold them out, not exactly, but when some intrepid young detectives discovered her real name and tied her activities to Hange, it was over. They took everything. The hearings were as bearable as Hange's elaborate fantasies of shoving Bunsen burners where they didn't belong.

            Hange knew it would come. They knew it would take one filing faux, one copy error, one stray huff for the cards to fall. They were not naive. They'd take the fine, serve the time. They'd start over somewhere else, run a tighter operation. They didn't demand to do their work. Their work demanded it of them.

            One proxy remained. He should have left. Hange demanded that he leave, demanded they all leave. Four of the five students who had each enrolled in a program and acted under Hange's instruction had fled the city, the country. Hange would take the fall, would admit to intimidation and coercion and whatever else was asked of them. They were impatient, insatiable. They were not cruel.

            One came to the hearing anyway, came to share the fall and break his bones if only it would spare just one of Hange's. Sweat rolled down his nose as he denounced each charge of conspiracy, plead for Hange, lied for Hange. He even made it to a restroom in time to spare the waxed courthouse halls the promise made by his white face and weak stomach.

            Hange barged in and asked exactly once why the man would ruin his life and Moblit Berner said exactly once that if he wanted to ruin his life, he'd never speak to them again.

             Hange drove him home and when they returned to their own, a stubby sort of man with knotted fingers waved a badge and explained the open door and armada of agents packing five years' worth of coffee cup rimmed journals and wrinkled notes into cardboard boxes plastered with the bureau's logo and it was all Hange could see when they blinked and when they looked away and when they stamped the trees and the road and the sky FBI FBI FBI.

            The agents were quite nice when they escorted Hange to a city precinct and explained the terrorism charges. Hange shouldn't have laughed. They weren't nice after that.

            "Won't get a thing outta them," Hange volunteered when they overheard an agent reviewing statements from their parents.

            The agent shut the folder and shut the door to the interrogation room. He watched Hange's bouncing foot, made a face at the crumbs Hange scattered as they gnawed on a stale bagel.

            "Miss Zoe-"

            "Just Zoe."

            "Miss Zoe, whatever you've instructed them to say-"

            "Didn't say a thing."

            It was a half-truth. There were the tired afternoons in the kitchen, the too-early morning attempts, attempts at every hour in between as if there existed that one golden minute in which their parents could understand again, could hear again. Hange had shouted it over the drone of evening news, over cooling moussaka, over the suffocating distance that a single night had spilled between them.

            Rain had pattered against the windshield. Open window. Pungent grass, slippery leaves. A twig bounced off the hood. The car snorted. Every house but Hange's, grey. Hange's, blue and red, blue and red, siren-painted. They slammed on the gas with numb toes, swerved with unfeeling hands.

            What'sthematterofficers sputtered out of their lungs bruised by a jackhammer heart and they'd forgotten to shut the door and the driver's seat was soaked but so was Hange, so had Hange left their mouth open like their house opening into the sky like an open door open mouth open peach squeezed, a splintered rainwater bowl.

            An accident, ma'am. A car slammed into the front door. It happens all the time. Drunk driver. We're awful sorry for you, ma'am, your parents are fine. Spooked, shaken up. They're fine. Just fine. They've been taken to a hospital, nothing serious, nothing serious.

            They can't speak to you right now became give them some time became leave them be became nothing serious became something serious became hours became days became weeks became I'm sorry we worried you but we're back and we're fine, we're fine, we're fine.

            Just a crash, she said, just a crash, he said. They moved out of Oakland and found a flat in San Francisco and we always wanted to move here, honey, isn't this the perfect opportunity, isn't this what you wanted, aren't you happy, why can't you be happy?

            The agent rattled off more of his questions and let Hange go. Days bled. Drive home. Sleep. Wake up. Lose toothbrush. Fingertip toast burn. Late to second hearing. Drive home. Third hearing. Phone rings. Moblit. Not now. Fifth hearing. Phone rings. Not now.

             Late night titan sequel, Titan Reborn or Titan Unleashed they were all the same, the same brutes blundering through big budget blockbusters. Cars, houses, torn in two by hands, rough hands, big hands, splinters girders fenders splitting like ripened fruit like peaches like red and blue houses.

            Dial ring click - Moblit it wasn't a car Moblit they lied scratch marks cars don't make scratch marks we were right we were

            The lines were tapped - a major minor oversight. They had all they needed. Quiet arrest. No cameras, not like in the TV shows, quiet no visitors lights out at nine wear this stand there.

            Hearings hearings meetings interrogations ma'am hearing trial date terrorist hearing bioweapon lady thirty-five to life oh we should have known your father and I we should have seen it should have stopped it I'm so sorry, we're so sorry.

            The interrogation room was an old friend. Lights hummed. Tiles flashed. Oily glasses. Won't clean on shirt, nosebleed stains. Man offered handkerchief thank you yes sir I've heard of Intermipol no sir I'm not familiar with reintegration centers is that where I'm

            Door opened. Men bickered. Testosterone static.

            Intermipol man left. Second man sat, said something, offered a mug of something, doesn't matter, silence. Photographs slid over - physical copies - he went to the trouble, how nice. Red and blue house. Another. Another. Another. Claw marks. Another. Teeth. Another. "Boring," Hange said. Old news. Copies. Accidents. Just an accident. Just accidents.

            Tablet slid over. Screams. Gunfire. The man in front of Hange is in the tablet, red and blue, red and blue, siren-painted. Shouted orders. Men, women, torn in two and three by rough hands torn like overripe peaches, squeezed, eaten. Black blades blood stream white steam static cut.

            "You returned home twenty minutes after this footage was taken," the man said. Hands clasped.

            "Who are you?"

            "For security purposes, the agency I represent keeps a low profile." Pressed suit. "Our duties include preventing the spread of the creatures-"

            Hange looked up.

            He noticed. "Yes, creatures, that are responsible for this and many other acts of violence against our homes and families. The Survey Corps believes that you would be an indispensable addition to our agency."

            Hange stared up, stared down. Pant leg wrapped combat boots. No time to change.  Traces brown red on worn ridges hiding stitches.

            "Why?"

            "We were contacted, and just in time," the man said, "by an associate of yours, mister Berner. He provided copies of your research and we found it very impressive. From his words, we understand that we also share the same goal. Imagine what you might accomplish once you no longer need worry about evading detection or procuring resources."

            Hange thumbed at the red and blue house. A car slammed into the front door. We're awful sorry for you, ma'am.

            "They told you it was a car accident," he said the way a man says something he's said a thousand times before.

            "They tell everyone it was a car accident," he said. Just a crash.

            "Witnesses who say otherwise are sent to...reintegration centers," he said. Aren't you happy, why can't you be happy?

            "You were right," he said. You're wrong watch too many movies insane ripping tearing don't you see, don't you see. Just an accident. Just a crash.

            "Sir," he said and Hange looked up. You were wrong. You were right.

            "We need you."

            Hange laughed flatly. "They got labs in prison?" No visitors lights out at nine wear this stand there.

            "No need. Full pardon."

            Hange passed a thumb over a watermark on each photo, a severe-looking SC.

            "Why haven't I heard of you before?" Hange asked.

            "For the same reason your parents have been assured that what they saw was a fantasy, a fever dream."

            An accident, ma'am. It happens all the time.

            "They were strongly encouraged to forget." 

            "Think you're doing me a favor," Hange snapped, "taking it easy on me with your fancy euphemisms?"

            To their surprise, the man laughed, an imperfect little huff. "Forgive me, they're more for my sake," he said. Lines threaded at his brow. Purple pooled around blue. "I have family, too, who were... strongly encouraged to forget," he said. Hands clasped. Healing blisters, scars, bandaged left wrist, sleeve-hidden wrapping calluses.

            "So all the movies, the video games, they're all..." Scapegoats. No sir, you must have been playing that game too often. No ma'am, it was that movie you saw last weekend. Plays tricks with your mind. Seeing things. Did you hear they're making a sequel?

            "A perfect way to-"

            Hange interrupted. "And your organization, it..." Drags the beasts behind the curtain. Pulls it up when the audience leaves, sweeps the gristle, mops the blood. Sometimes someone forgets their playbill, their coat. They see the brooms, the bones. Intermipol escorts them out and shows them a different play again, and again, and again.

            "Takes care of the-"

            Hange interrupted. "The news, the reality shows..." Consistency. Community. Authority.

            The man didn't speak again, but not for loss of patience - he didn't lose his temper the way the others had when Hange finished their sluggish sentences, their labored thoughts. He leaned back easily, hands twined on his lap as Hange stood and paced. No, he was amused to be cut short, relieved to be beaten. Curious. Hange stopped in front of him.

            "What do you want?" Hange asked.

            "You."

            "I mean what in return."

            "You are our return."

            "I don't believe you."

            He smiled. "We ask that our agents enter a comprehensive reorientation service to deprogram the conditioning they've taken for second nature for much of their lives, conditioning engineered to inspire uncertainty when engaging and analyzing these sorts of creatures. You've processed three months' worth of this training in the four minutes that we've spoken."

            Hange sat and crossed their arms. "One cage to another."

            "One concrete, one gilded."

            "So you agree it's a cage!"

            "By your metric, all the world is a cage."

            "You don't know my metric."

            "I know it's a contrary one."

            "Not necessarily."

            "You see? And why not? Mine would be. An endless succession of men in suits telling you what you can and cannot read, can and cannot say, can and cannot do-"

            "There's no helping that."

            "You don't believe that, you never did."        

            "You don't know what I believe."

            "You wouldn't be in here if you did."

            "I'm here 'cause I was wrong."

            "You're here because you were right."

            "So you're different?"

            "We are."

            "You're Intermipol's dog."

            "We are."

            The admission was unexpected. Hange waited for more but the man only watched them, blue chasing brown. Hange turned away, turned back at a muted rustle. He had unpinned a pea-small microphone from his lapel and placed it on the table, got up and passed his hand over the frame of the door and then the bottom of the two-way mirror. When he returned to the table, three black peas joined the first and he crushed the flimsy receivers with the heel of his palm. Blue found brown.

            "Unfortunately," he mouthed.

            Hange stared. They sat, cross legged, on the table and reached out, picked at the crushed micromesh with chewed nails, held it, crumbling, in their palm. They waited for a tomato-faced agent who never burst through the door, for muffled bluster that never came. Power, Hange thought. The pieces ground together in Hange's closing fist.

            "A cage is a cage," they muttered.

            He took his seat again. "You needn't choose a cage at all."

            Hange opened their mouth, but something changed in the man. The room squeezed.

             "You can enter yourself into an Intermipol reintegration center, what that gentleman before me was about to advise you to do. Full pardon as well. All charges dropped."

            "You can unlearn every photograph I've shown you," he said, "every face you've seen in this station, every last thing you discovered by studying the molecular data in the leaked incursion records you bought from the darknet and replicated using the laboratories in those universities. You may even be welcomed back to one of them, it isn't unprecedented."

            "You can return to your family," he said. Picnic frog catcher. Mother's laughter bubbles, trickles, rare. Never a lull in her casework. Dad takes sabbatical. His students visit on weekends. Mustache twitches at belly laughs. He's a father to all of them and there's so much of him, them, to share. Come home. You work too hard. Don't forget about us.

            "There's no cage if you can't see it," he said. I'm sorry we worried you but we're back and we're fine, we're fine, we're fine.

            "You can be happy," he said. Isn't this what you wanted, aren't you happy, why can't you be happy?

            Hange didn't know when they'd started shaking their head, when the room began warbling like a too-full glass.

            "I don't want to be happy," they said. "I can't, it's-"

            "A luxury," he said quietly.

            "There's so much-"

            "Left to do," he finished.

            "I can't just-"

            "Abandon your life's work."

            Hange turned to him again. Large eyes, large nose, wide brows, full lips, broad chest, everything about him too much, too big. He was an armory. A bully's build, a brute's hands, a swindler's smile, a liar's beauty, but to Hange his eyes flashed too bright, smile too openly guarded, unassumingly probing, undemandingly curious, perfectly imperfect.

            "Didn't catch your name," Hange said and he smiled and it was a good, unpracticed smile. He stood and offered his hand.

            "Security chief Erwin Smith."

            Hange reread the employment contract twelve times. Moblit, who too, had been offered a position within the Survey Corps, had the foresight to make copies so that Hange's annotations and corrections wouldn't blacken the pages to illegibility. For two and a half weeks, the Survey Corps' security chief mediated between Hange's demands and the top brass.

            It was a sticky and grey July morning when Hange was first escorted through the offensively spotless labs, and it almost felt real.

            It was a wet and howling October evening when Hange saw for themself between columns of steam why the Survey Corps could not capture specimens dead or alive and Hange howled with napeless titans because it was real, it was all real, and they knew what had to be done.

            They needed subjects. To have subjects, they needed to sedate, to transport, to  contain. They needed to know why creatures towering four and five and six feet above their largest soldiers moved faster than those same men and women in cars, on bikes. They needed to know why titans do not need to eat but feast all the same, why they stumble stupidly, why they are seen so much and so little.

_Barbiturates: inconclusive. Antihistamines: inconclusive. Benzodiazepines : inconclusive._

They needed to know why they dragged their feet when the sun retired, needed to know where they made their bed, if they made their bed, if they understood what a mother was, a father, a child. They needed to know if they dream, what they dream, what they fear, what they hope, if they hope, if they fear, Hange wanted, Hange needed, to know.

            _Herbal sedatives: inconclusive. Pesticides: Sluggish activity five minutes after administration. Duration: inconclusive. Dart gun ineffective against specimens larger than eight feet. Suggested dart tipped poles. Erwin opposed. (Mike looked interested - consult later)_

            In three months, Hange rose to fifth in command of the field operations unit of the Research and Development division. In four, they were second in command of the entire division, and didn't quite understand what gossiping agents meant when they joked that R&D had its own Erwin Smith, though it did put them behind schedule every time Moblit overheard this and dropped whatever he was doing to declare that it was the Security division that had its own Hange Zoe.

            Erwin assured Hange that the protections the Survey Corps offered them were extended to their family, always had been. They were safe, unbothered. There must have been some other reason that months of Hange's letters, emails, postcards, had gone unanswered.

            It had gone out of their mind until several operations later, when another Sec division agent found them stitching sloppily at a hole in their coat and taken them for tea and baklava at Lily's, though they had only ten minutes before both needed to show up for an afternoon equipment inspection, enough time for one to finish the stitch, for the other to give the walls of cameras in their cave of a division another glance, or whatever it was they did over at Security. 

            Mike laughed when Hange told him as much, the timbre of it crackling as if it was falling out of use, and said only that he was growing arrogant for assuming he could put off a quiet little diversion like this for another hour, another day.  That Erwin's plans were meant to survive decades did not guarantee that he himself would, or anything he may have wanted to say, to feel, to share. The pastry crumbled beneath his fork.

            That evening, Hange arranged to meet with a pharmacology expert in Los Angeles to attempt to narrow their pesticide lead. After squeezing from the professor a library of records and statistics to pore through, Hange allowed their team a few hours to themselves before the flight back.

            Hange rode alone along the shore, between commuters. Their heart leapt to their fist and they knocked at the chipped door of their parents' flat once, twice, three times. The peephole clicked. Floorboards stopped groaning, voices stopped speaking. The muted blare of evening news was shut off and all Hange could hear on their way down the corridor and down the steps and in the plane and in their office was the echo of their own pleading, their screaming, their "Fine!"s and the burn in their palms from sliding down the fire escape when sirens crept into the street.

            "What is i-" was all Erwin was able to say before Hange slammed the office door off its top hinge and upended his desk and all the wretched things on it.

            "You said they were safe. You promised-" Hange said or something similar they couldn't recall over the rush of blood in their ears and the thud of Judas' back to the wall.

            He sighed when Hange admitted to mentioning titans in their letters. "Imagine yourself," he said to them, "a family lawyer and a university professor, hearing from your child that they're fighting monsters that every last person in the world, on the screen, on the street, knows only as a fiction."

            "So they...they think I'm a radical. They think- they think I'm blowing up trains and shooting up churches with those, those animals, they think I'm insane. Is this what you meant by "protect"? You lied to me. Do you lie to everyone? Fix this."

            "I can't."

            "You lied," Hange said, pushing away and pacing the length of the room, "you said you'd protect them, y-" They stopped. "You wanted this," Hange said, coming back. "You wanted them to hate me, wanted me all to yourse-"

            "I would never-" Erwin snapped, and for a moment, Hange thought his voice might rise above a whisper, rise to meet the insult in his eyes, the jolt of tension in his shoulders, but it didn't, it never did, never would.

            "They are protected," he said. "Intermipol cannot abduct them again, cannot use them against you as leverage, not without a fight from the Corps, from me. That is all I can do. This is the best I can-"

            "No," Hange said. "It's not."

            Two years later, the security chief-turned-commander of the Survey Corps announced his campaign to overthrow the International Military Police.

 

            "Chief Zakarius, please," Moblit said, "please, they're very-"

            "'Course I know what happened," Hange said. They scratched at their scalp. "It's in the report."

            "Stop telling me you read-"

            "Page thirty four, line sixteen: -priority call placed to Defense Secretary Dot Pixis at approximately 0100 in order to- end line."

            Mike leafed through the report for the line. Hange laughed humorlessly at the twinge of disbelief at his brow.

            "Don't tell me you don't have some super duper thing these stupid dreams've given you. Night vision? Telepa- no, not that-"

            "Hange-" Mike started uneasily, an eye darting toward Moblit.

            "Hah, don't worry about Moblit, he knows."

            "Knows?" Mike echoed. Moblit threw up his hands.

            "I don't know much - anything! Aside, I mean aside from - from what Officer Zoe has-"

            "So what is it, Mike?" Hange said. "I really wanna know now. Super strength? Telekinesis?"

            "I can smell garbage three cities away."

            Hange visibly deflated. "Huh. Lucky."

            Mike bristled and folded his arms. "Lucky? I'd love to trade places-"

            "No," Moblit said immediately. "You don't."

            Mike looked at him more closely. Moblit was nearly affronted, his eyes downcast but shoulders rigid and hands curled into fists. His sandy hair was nearly as greasy as Hange's - a feat - and it couldn't have been just the light that cast such livid shadows on his eyes.

            "What's going on with you two..." Mike muttered. Hange opened and closed their mouth several times, uncharacteristically uncertain.

            "No, I'm more...disturbed at your reaction, or... lack of to Foley, if I'm gonna believe you did read this thing." He added venomously, "Does Erwin get shot in the head so often that it doesn't matter to you? Is it so easy for you to distance yourself, lock yourself up in that lab, act like we're noth-"

            "Chief Zakarius, you need to leave," Moblit declared. He even stepped into Mike's space, comically small next to the man but commanding a gravity that even Mike seemed to notice.

            "Wait, wait, wait," Hange said as they rubbed their face. Their glasses jumped at the jostling and clattered to the floor. Mike sighed. He brushed past Moblit and knelt to pick them up. He turned them over, gave Hange a look, and wiped them on his jacket.

            "Moblit, check on lab 4B," Hange said. "Give Morgan a kick for me if the report's late again."

            "Officer-"

            "Now, Moblit."

            Mike watched him leave, watched him tear his eyes from Hange like it wounded him. He stepped past a pile of bolts and knocked a piece from the very tip. Mike caught it before it slipped under the couch, kneeling still, and held it to the light.

            "You came to tell me you're leaving," Hange said.

            The light flickered on the bolt. "So Nan told you."

            "No."

            "Who, then?"

            "I just know."

            "Don't play games. Or am I so obvious?"

            Hange chewed on their lip. They tried to draw breathe, to speak. They couldn't. Mike warbled in their eyes. The room shuddered. There wasn't enough air.

            "Hey. Hey. What's happening, are you-"

            The floor began to peel. Sound leaked away, going, gone. Screws popped out of drywall. Bricks crumbled, rotten, rotting. Eyes. Teeth. Hange reached into their coat.

            "Don't worry, Mike," Hange sputtered into the void, unhearing, as Mike crumbled too, as their hands closed around crushed velvet, as they brought them to their eyes, their nose, as stray petals disobeyed vacuum pull and drifted to the reassembling floor and Hange breathed in, lightheaded, drunk on good, sweet air.

            Mike returned, or rather, reappeared, a phone to his ear gently lowered, lowering, eyeing green stems and crumpled lilac.

            "Just a hiccup," Hange said, cracking a knuckle, "No big deal."

            For a long moment, he said nothing. Hange cleared their throat if only to be sure they could hear again.

            "And that?" He finally said, pointing to the lilac.

            "It helps. Contradictions, they miti-" Hange stopped, out of breath. "-mitigate the, uh, the hallucinatory parts. Unique to each of u-" They took another breath, cheeks puffed full of it.

            Mike took a seat next to Hange, braced his elbows on his knees and dropped his head in his hands.

            "Hey. Hey..." Hange patted at one of his broad shoulders. The sight of them buckled and frozen was wrong. Mike was strong. "Hey..."

            "This is insane," he said, muffled by his hands.

            "Yeah."

            "This shouldn't be happening."

            "Uh-huh."

            "It's not real."

            "Mm.."

            "It can't be real."

            "Ehh..."

            "Why? Why us?"

            "Iunno.." Hange rubbed at his back lazily.

            Mike shook his head. "I can't even say I want this all to be a bad dream. If I could do something to fix this, anything-"

            Hange's hand stilled. "So you do want to leave. You think distance is a factor?"

            Mike twined his hands.

            "We haven't tried it. So yes."

            "We still haven't ruled out the water-"

            "It can't be in the air or the water or the food. We were abroad, all of us. Never farther than a town or two away from the others. I still dreamed. I know you and Erwin did too." He turned to Hange. "You hid away on purpose, didn't you? You wanted to see if interaction with the rest of us would affect it."

            Hange brought their hand to their mouth and gnawed at their thumbnail. They nodded.

            "And?"

            Hange shook their head. Mike's jaw worked.

            "The Halcion I suggested to...to you and Levi," Hange said quietly, "it only made it worse, didn't it?"

            "You couldn't have known. We thought it was only insomnia."

            "It still had some effect. Maybe," Hange said, "maybe it can still...if I study how its synthesized, I can-"

            "It's not some chemical that'll help us," Mike muttered. "It's not...radiation or hypnosis or...or anything that makes sense. Hange, this is wrong. It's not normal. The answer has to be-"

            "-just as "normal" as the problem."

            "Right." Mike stood. "I'll make preparations, ride to The Ring when their time is up and brief Erwin on the way back to the city. Rodriguez will be acting Security chief-"

            "Not Farlan?"

            "No. He's on the Firefly project. Our, uh..."success" at Panacea brought in enough funding to canvas another city."

            "Funding from _Intermipol_?"

            "No, straight from the Pentagon, courtesy of Pixis. With the caveat that the next Firefly city would be-"

            "No way - Washington?"

            "Yeah." Mike strode to the door, locked it, and made a sweep of the room with a thumb-sized radio frequency detector. When he was content that the office was clean, he said:

            "Project Firefly grows, Washington becomes a little safer and a little more willing to give us a dime, we get an opportunity to "accidentally" leak a suggestive email or two that'll put the heat on our activity in DC and off of HQ in time for the campaign."

            "You think those subway assassinations, Beckert and Foley...you think that's Intermipol? They trying to scare us, they caught on?"

            "They've always known Erwin was no good, and I'm sure something slipped through the cracks while we were abroad so we need to move as soon as he comes back."

            Hange watched him. He wasn't finished. "But...?"

            He shook his head. Then he sighed. "I don't know. Just thinking. But they also knew Keith was starting to itch under all the new regulations. If they start to suspect the story doesn't hold up-"

            "Why wouldn't they? Shadis gives bad orders, Erwin's outraged and calls for a court-martial, one disappears before indictment, the other gets command. It's textbook. Kinda."

            Mike examined a curled rod from another pile. "If they even get it in their heads that Erwin and Shadis _planned_ that stunt to guarantee Erwin gets command right before Intermipol was set to announce that it had given itself nominating power, it's over. They'll arrest everyone Erwin's ever spoken to. And they'll put one of their own in the big chair and that'll be the end to any real opposition to Intermipol in our lifetimes."

            Hange winced as they bit too eagerly and Mike swatted their hand out of their mouth.

            "Hey," Hange said. "Report made it sound like Beck and Foley came out of nowhere. I know you keep the juicy parts out of those things so how'd you really find them?"

            Mike shifted uncomfortably. "I-"

            "Smelled them?" Hange interrupted. They leapt to their feet when Mike waved his hand vaguely.

            "So that's it. We have it," Hange said. "Real, honest proof. Intermipol is using radicals to spy on us."

            "I wouldn't call it proof."

            "I would, and I do, and it is," Hange said, staring so intently at him that Mike looked away. "What do they smell like? Why didn't you smell them before? Aren't they third years? How come you d-"

            "Remember when I said I'd charge per question if you did that?"

            "Absolutely not. You'd never be so cruel. Just saying that hurts you, I know you, Zakarius."

            Mike smiled and Hange beamed at it, at him. It was a rare thing.

            "Yeah. You do," he said, and it was gone. "Then you'll know...you'll know that..." His eyes darted to Hange as if he expected them to interrupt, to finish the thought for him. Hange did not.

            "You'll know I need to...I need to understand this."

            "I know."

            "I don't want to believe that these dreams, these...visions are random, that they...that they mean nothing. If they aren't engineered, aren't a...a targeted attack but some divine...I know, I'm going to sound..." He chanced a glance at Hange again and they were nodding, eyes encouraging. He swallowed thickly. "If it's some natural phenomena or a...a divine trial, I want it to mean something, make it mean something. And if it is engineered, created...it can be destroyed. For Erwin, for all of us."

            "Even for Levi?"

            Mike tensed. "Why not."

            "Mike-"

            "Don't mention him again. Erwin trusts him and I trust Erwin. That's the end of it."

            "Oh no, it's not."

            Mike's jaw worked again. His nose flared and it was wrong. Mike was patient. "I know you're good friends," he said, "I know he and Erwin are... very good friends, but..."

            "But what? I know it's not jealousy, you're not a jealous guy. I mean, that time I made out with Nanaba, you were perfectly-"

            "It's nothing. Just a feeling."

            Hange groaned. "Your "just a feeling" just saved Erwin's life. You would've caught Foley years ago if you could, but you couldn't. You couldn't pick up the scent, not til' now, and I bet it was faint, I bet you thought you were imagining things, bet you debated with yourself night and day whether to go to Erwin with it or not, if you went to him at all-"

            "I did."

            "You did! You did. So, what's up with Levi? Think Levi's a mole, a double agent? Intermipol? Radical? Both? Maybe if he's a triple agent-"

            "No. I told you, it's-"

            "Nothing."

            "Just a-"

            "Feeling."

            "Enough."

            "You said it yourself. Weird problem, weird answer. What if...what if what we're looking for is a feeling? What if-"

            Mike began to make his way to the door. "You're right. Let's all dance and sing _The Hills are Alive-"_

"Mike, wait-" Hange used their superior knowledge of the office's labyrinthine piles of scrap to beat him to the door and throw themselves against it and Mike tugged it open anyway and it was wrong, Mike was patient, Mike was kind.

            "I'll tell Moblit to come back-"

            "I don't need an assistant," Hange pleaded, "I need a friend, I need y-"

            "They'll be out in five days," he said, brushing past. "You've been fine holing yourself up here for months. Few more days'll be nothing to you."

            He didn't quite slam the door, but he didn't have to. The floor began to peel.

           

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	11. Detach

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [Interstellar - Detach](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs_Az-D-zDA)  
> ♫ [Interstellar - Murph](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwhe5FJw-K4)
> 
> Really, the entire Interstellar OST.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been gnawing my nails about needing to write this part of the story since MOS began (so, nearly a full year (how about that Sunday anniversary?)) so I anticipated dragging my feet, not slamming out 12k in one and a half days.  
> Uploading this one is more terrifying than usual. It's been cooking for months. I hope you enjoy. 
> 
> -FTL refers to faster than light travel.  
> -This chapter has major character deaths

             By the turn of the decade, every setback began and ended with the International Military Police. In January of 2090, Intermipol severely restricted outside donations, and again the following February. By that spring, the Survey Corps was fiscally leashed. A single penny spent out of place was met with system-wide shutdowns and mandatory inspections. Samples froze over, overheated. Week-long, month-long trials needed to be scrapped, started over. Paranoia crept in. R&D agents became anxious, distracted. Lab fires halted work for days.

            It was while the cleaning crew  scraped char from the walls for the second time in a week that Hange snuck into Security division headquarters and bribed agents with enough coffee for them to explain - harmlessly, they assumed - exactly how Intermipol monitored what went in and out of Survey Corps coffers.

            Nampa, Idaho. July 2087. Level one incursion. Record: two point nine meters.

            After a week of dusk to dawn phone calls and private meetings, Hange presented the newly appointed commander with a list of companies as thrilled with Intermipol's overreach as the Survey Corps itself - weapons and vehicle manufacturers whose contracts Intermipol awarded itself the ability to rewrite and stipulate, stipulate, stipulate, municipalities outraged at the amount of Intermipol-friendly legislation squeezing into local, city and even state legal and political affairs, and media companies growing wary of Intermipol's increasingly tight editorial control. Surely, Hange said, there was no harm in making a few friends.

            Hange shouldn't have been surprised that Erwin offered them Mike's own fairly similar list with his own and asked when they were ready to begin.

            Their work stretched into the summer. Erwin opened an account under an untraceable name and encouraged private donations from Intermipol-weary contacts to fund the operations of a Shadow Corps which, free from Intermipol scrutiny, quietly stoked anti-Intermipol sentiment and lay the foundation for a securities network in a city, then a coastline, then the country, through which, Hange learned later, a single message might one day be broadcast uninterrupted for as long as the network was stable.

            Their reach blossomed but it was not enough, not large enough, not fast enough. R&D was still stalled, still grounded with inspections and investigations and so many interruptions that Hange begged, bribed and threatened - often all three involving some harm or other coming to his beloved Lily's Bakery - until Erwin set aside a fraction of the shadow account to fund one small, precious, private lab off the main campus in which Hange could work undisturbed, uninterrupted, unthreatened.

            But there were only so many hours in the day, and only one of Hange. It was not enough. It would not be enough until Intermipol removed their hand from their throat.

            On November 20th, 2090, three fugitives were granted amnesty and formal membership into the Survey Corps by Commander Erwin Smith. On November 22nd, Intermipol declared that an Intermipol representative was from then on required to approve all memberships and internal promotions. Isabel Magnolia, Levi, and Farlan Church were the last freely and unconditionally accepted members of the Survey Corps.      

            Pulau Karimata, Karimata Islands. March 2088. Level one incursion. Record: three meters.

            Hange woke gasping every few weeks, then every week, then every day. They thought nothing of it. Sleepless nights were not the exception but the rule.

            Upwards of thirty percent of new applicants to the New York City Survey Corps headquarter division were denied in December of 2090. The following January, international memberships were lower than they had been in two decades, and the trend continued into the year. Appeals went unanswered. It was only through Nile Dawk, Erwin told them, that he had the barest idea of what stirred within Intermipol at all. It was something of a shock - if even Nile, who broke out in hives, Mike swore, if he so much as thought of rocking the boat, began to feed even the most cursory information to the Corps, to Erwin, then they were running out of time, hurtling toward a deadline they could not even see.

            Bright lights on metal on tongue and smoke laced hair. Cherry lips and metal whines, metal screech and cries, captains hailing, drowning, they're gone, they're

            Every few weeks, Hange watched themself die. They watched, immobile, in their own head as something, someone, fired triggers with their fingers and shouted orders with their voice and watched themselves buckle over a hunk of red-rim metal sloshing at their pink steel-speckled hands drifting, sinking, roped, red.

            They dreamt longer. They dreamt louder. Their mouth twisted, upside down and inside out, strange tongue making strange sounds. When their hand rose to scratch their chest, nails raked mirror-sleek, whirring-warm. They were a steel-fleshed feeling function.

            One night, they were small, so small, and they realized they were a child looking through child's eyes, then, still a child and already things blinked, shined, whirred along their arms, on the swirl of their ears and on their lanky scraped bubblegum pink band aid-freckled brown legs.

            One night, they were big, too big. No, not big. Far. Too far. Motes of dust played on a screen, played on artificial air, clung to the warble of black dotted with light, studded with gnashing, star-grinding teeth.

            Moblit regularly accompanied them to their midtown offices to meet with Erwin, or downtown to Sec div, though he insisted he come even if only to pass a block or two. Erwin was especially grateful.  He had learned the hard way that Hange's impressively hole-punched memory made its strongest debut at the first rumble of foot traffic and early morning taxi honk-off. As the light changed, Hange's feet dragged. Moblit lost them for a moment and turned, and Hange imagined him a steel heart, a kind program.

            Hange kept a notebook for a week, then threw it out. A dream journal, what nonsense. They tried again a second time, this time for a week they recorded them, drew them, nonsense pictures, flickering lights, words, garbling, clunky charcoal words smearing eggshell white.

            They refused to keep one again. They burned the last ones, watched the smoke- curled embers jump, heard them pop and hiss. Just a dream. Just an accident. Just a dream. Their fingers itched, burn-calloused thumb rubbing the pen-calloused middle.

            County Kerry, Ireland. February 2089. Level two incursion. Record: three point two meters.

            Hange dreamed of machine-men and circuit-women. They played, they calculated. They laughed, cried. They lived on a rock. They divided it in three. The ones in the center did much of the laughing, the playing. The ones farther out took care of the working, the analyzing, and more than their fair share of the crying. The rock had a ceiling, a miles-high dome. In the dome was another, stronger dome, and in the middle of that one, a stronger one yet. The dome people in the center were nearly unmarked by artifice. From the raised ridges on their brows,  Hange guessed they preferred neural enhancements, or the appearance of them. They ate well, danced well, played well. The dome people farthest out wore masks, breathed artifice, ate with needles. They replaced their legs and arms and hearts and tilled field like oxen or else rebuilt, rebuilt, rebuilt the shuddering domes, long used to the distant echoes of cracks. They slept beneath a trembling sky. 

            Every night was the worst kind of orchestra, and Hange's drooping lashes, an overture to cellos a million strong thrumming their own sonatas, to a thousand horns blaring each its own in perfect imperfect unison an ode to the absence of silence and Hange wondered to whom they'd passed the eternal flame to suffer this Promethean eagle, to wake each morning sure as the sun may rise that they were deafened and blinded by a million moving images jostling for attention at once, all at once, only to see the sunrise and hear the hurried knock of an assistant or the muffled shouting of a neighbor's dog and think that was the last time, the one time, the only time, before the day ended and Hange folded their arms to cushion their head and the overture began again.

            The stories returned when Hange inspected samples, unraveled as Hange stirred coffee, checked reports, poked toes through socks more hole than cotton. One by one, daylight bribed the trombone for a private concert, then the sax, then the violin. Engines hummed in their ink-stained hands. Lullabies coiled the knots in their hair.

            The visions splashed over walls and pages and agents as if a projector were mounted behind their eyes and a speaker tucked into their ears. They were easy to ignore if the situation demanded it, for a time. But Hange didn't want to ignore them, not anymore.

            They wanted to know why, and they wanted to know how. They were only dreams. They were supposed to be dreams.

            Machine-knights and circuit-pilots wore crossed wings on their backs and shoulders and Hange wore them too and it bothered them, truly, when they had seen not a feather in all their nights, not a stem, not a petal. A bird was mythology and a feather, a scripture. Hange laughed themselves awake wondering if they would one night discover the Church of the Great Tit.

            This sun was so small. Debris smothered it like a luxurious brown coat, fur ruffle tickling timid-hearted chilly, chilling core. It was not whole, this stone, this dwarf, it was not Hange's. It was not Sol. And this rock, it was not Earth.

            They were trying to remember the name of the middle dome when Isabel's giggle caught their ear. Hange looked up as she made inexplicably guttural growling noises at them with elbow-tucked claw hands and Hange nearly lost their lunch laughing when they realized they had so warped their tongue searching for it as to startle a passing student.

            Isabel gnawed oxblood polish off calloused pinkies, glassy nails. Mid-thought, the red dream returned to Hange and they remembered more, remembered red rim-lined metal womb lips and water glassy-clear sloshing in a tub and not-tub of red ropey bathwater, not-bathwater. Eyes tear-clouded, hands blood-cooled, trigger-silent. Isabel flicked dusty lashes. "What is it?" she asked, nail-muffled, and Hange said, "I don't know, sweet pea," and without thinking, hesitating, added, "not yet."

            They started filling notebooks again, filled them until their hands cramped. They typed, then, typed until their wrists locked. They dictated then, spoke until their voice withered, until their tongue lay useless, heavy, in their mouth. Every word they uncovered of that garbled dome language they recalled with perfect clarity. Every irregular verb and conjugation stung and held, a fresh tattoo.

            Hange remembered every new word, every slice of slang, every nuance. They were not seeing new images, new scenes, anymore but clawing at the same red and blue and black and white dreams for more, and more, and more. Slowly, the cellos a million strong played one note in unison, then two, then three.

            The dome-people had one hundred and thirty two words that were a variation of _homesick_. They possessed double as many for _authority_ , and double that for _obey_. They did not have a word for _lily_ , or _robin_ , or _moon_.

            One morning, a local shadow agent requested a physical meeting to untangle a sudden logistical error. Hange did not realize they had ridden the two trains and walked the three and a half blocks there and back until they returned to a slack-jawed Moblit, who had been too preoccupied with latest mandatory lab inspection to notice Hange's absence until their return.

            The memories returned faster, reappeared in duets and quartets stronger, clearer. They were getting louder.

            Hange raised a thermos of tea to their lips. It disappeared, ropey red. When they came to, Isabel was shaking them. The floor was sticky, and their hands. The thermos had rolled under a table. They understood. The red dream. The red machine. So they had defended it to the death. So it was important. So it was clear. They could see it, they could smell it, touch it. The quartet played in unison.

            Before dismissing her for the day, Hange asked Isabel what she would die for. Her brothers, she'd said immediately. No, bunny, _what_. Isabel scuffed the ground with her metal leg. The flowers Moblit had once painted on the calf were starting to fade. "Dunno," she said. "Something that'll stick it to these titans, I guess."

            The next day, Hange gave her a special assignment.

            Hange cleared their private lab and reassigned the agents working it. They could smell an electric damp, a slow, laboring electric shock along the space where it stood, didn't stand, would stand. They ran their hands through the sloshing waves, there and not-there. Every night, they woke with a gasp, as if from a still lake, a humming sea, a thrumming, red-lipped metal womb. This machine was important. In this dream and not-dream, red and not-red, Hange had killed for it, died for it. It was important. It was not just an accident. It was not just a dream.

            Erwin was restless. He was about to announce his campaign. On his way out of their office, he glanced at the page Hange displayed on a whim -

            _risa??? ro ri ross rosi rosa ROSE **DOME ROSE** Dome Maria Dome Rose Dome ????_

            - and he took it and Hange knew, they knew he had them too.

            Churchill, Manitoba. December 2090. Level two incursion. Record: three point nine meters.

            Isabel fidgeted, foggy and forgetful and Hange almost asked if she too heard cacophonies but Isabel only had a fool brother and a shy wish.

            Levi had stopped taking Halcion all at once. Hange monitored his dosage decrease. They gave him a key to their, now Isabel's, garden. He let Hange record his blood pressure, his vitals, let them talk at him, let them fill the silence full with celebrity gossip and lost breakthroughs and odd pinings and he would say nothing but he would listen and he would come back and he would smell like young tulips, like four kinds of mint. He didn't return when Hange asked if he ever had dreams. Key returned. Smile unreturned. Hange knew, they knew he had them too.

            Hange gave Isabel a list of the remaining items they needed and left the city to join the global division survey. Mid-ride between the barren slopes of Pennsylvania's mountains, the commander relayed schedule updates through chilled headsets and Hange saw him then, saw an Erwin without steel-toed boots but steel-boned arms and not fleets of bike-hum and supply trucks but engine-roar and armadas and ships, not commander but admiral, man and not-man, crossed wings etched into his back.

            Hange blinked the flakes from their lashes and rode on. In the crinkling lattice, cross-feather crested dreadnaughts slipped out of dome pores and returned white-boned, returned picked clean if they returned at all.

            Mike smoked. Seeing it once was a troubling thing, a private omen. He didn't do it often. It troubled his nose. He was always particular about it. To throttle it once was to blind and deafen himself.  

            Soon, he was rarely seen without one and Hange knew, they knew he had them too.

            Port of Spain, Trinidad. February 2091. Level three incursion. Record: four point one meters.

             There were too many dead. Levi asked, venom on his tongue, how Intermipol would possibly cover up forty-three dead, three hundred and counting with missing arms, legs. It will, Erwin said, and it did. That night, Hange welcomed the noise.

            Levi sat to Hange's left on their flight to South Africa, and to Erwin's right. A drowsy Hange planted their elbow against an arm rest and cushioned their face with their fist as they stared idly, watched Levi shiver in the AC-frenzied plane, watched the fine brown-black hairs on his arms stand as he watched - ironically, he'd insist - a rerun of some trashy American reality show on the screen in the seat in front of him. Hange wondered if they'd seen him in that dome-world before and as if they'd ordered it, he was there, a vision and not-vision of sleek, unapologetically displayed and painstakingly polished metal arms, hands, legs and though Hange's precious dome people, their machine-men and circuit-women, had shown some skin, a lot or a little, he spared none at all. No hair stood on his arms. No eyes glowed, backlit, like his though glass lashes, synthetic hair. Ribs blossomed to an engine-heart and  Hange watched, moving and not-moving, as their own steel-speckled hands hovered over the natural, not-natural thrum of a man and not-man.

            Finally, Hange noticed. It had happened quietly. It happened to the accompanying sonata of crashing ships and screeching bikes and splitting blades and beast howl and it happened so gently, heartbeat in a hurricane, that Hange was nearly upset at having missed it. They wondered if Erwin knew, or if he missed it too, missed the seconds falling away before each _Yes, Sir_ and each _Roger_ , missed the inches shortening between each shadowing step, missed the blood spilling faster and hotter and heavier for him, just for him.

            They wondered if Levi knew, or if he missed it too, missed the promise in each _Engage_ , in each _Wait_ , in each _Stay_ , missed commands growing bolder and faster and deadlier for him, just for him.

            Four prototype helidiscs were ready for them when they reached Johannesburg. Levi and agent Imani Jones proved to be the fastest learners so Erwin ordered the two to train a reserve squad. Hange had had about enough of watching the more reckless fliers hurtle into a slight, cautious thing and bullied Levi into letting her train alone. He crowed something about favoritism and pet projects when he found the two giggling over dinner and Hange barked something back, they didn't remember what. They shouldn't have, it frightened Shoshanna, and he had not been with them long enough to know why the second accusation stung. Hange promised her, promised Abrams they'd watch her practice, cheer her first incursion flight.

            On their last night in the city, Hange drove her back to the barracks, then remembered, groaning, that they had forgotten the water cooler by the training field. They hurried back and found it but the field wasn't empty and Hange counted more agents on watch than usual. A pair of fliers were practicing, one silhouette cocky, one unspeakably clumsy. One hovered upside down, feet planted flat against the sloped plane instead of hanging by wires, and held the arms of the other, their feet planted right side up and jerking this way and that. The light shifted and Hange watched the commander's right hand grasp his right hand.

            They were inspecting the Alexandrian division Hange saw it again, the blue dream. It was all it was for months, blurry flushed deep-blue flashes, songbird-blips and circuit-stone, a lazy tint whenever it returned mid-day, mid-navy inspections and post-indigo lunches. It returned mid-operation, however, and Hange had no choice but to ignore the blur of faces and talk over the mercifully hushed whispers Hange heard from a second set of ears, faces seen by another, them and not-them, Hange and not-Hange, other Hange.

            It returned brighter in Spain, clearer. Hange excused themself from a meeting with the Madrid division chief and shut themselves in a bathroom. They could smell it now. Their fingertips ached with untouched things.

            Other Hange and three others were somewhere underground, the four of their faces inscrutable. For hours, Hange sat there, back to the door and barking at timid knocks and Are you okay's while their counterpart explained to this other Erwin, this death-wish admiral that what they were doing was illegal was experimental was last-resort was irreversible and he nodded yes and yes and yes, I understand, I know, I know.

            Then other-Hange took aside this Levi with blades in his arms and ticking in his chest and told him that he let this man replace every bone in his body, every nerve and every cord of muscle but his brain and now he wanted that too, wanted to touch and add and subtract and it could hurt and it could ruin and this other Levi nearly killed them and certainly wanted to as he said to them, syllables motor-fury fast, that "this man" could take him apart and shatter him and throw him into the sun and other Levi - and, Hange was beginning to think, any-Levi - would give him the hammer himself, would beg for it, would thank him if it meant they could find Earth, he said - and at that, Hange's blood chilled - if they could find Earth, if they could come home.

            Hange watched the ten hour procedure in its entirety. Powder blue masks, gloves. Slate eyes followed lapis blinking away at overhead bulb-white. Teal rivets, unriveted. Hange the Unriveter.

            Hange slid further down the door and someone else knocked then, persistent and deaf to Hange's "go away"'s and "still shitting"'s.

            To their surprise, it was not only other Levi's head they were opening and prying into but other Erwin's, leaping back and forth between them to match their fevered movements as other Mike handed wires and scrubbed pliers and wiped sweat from their brow until indigo became navy became black.

            Passed out, Moblit explained when Hange sat up in a guest room, when the cool cloth slipped from their forehead. With a fever, he clipped, not quite annoyed, not quite overjoyed. As he left to report to Erwin, Hange kicked their covers away indignantly. They were so close. They almost knew, they almost saw, almost, almost, almost.

            The red dream returned in Minsk and Hange saw more of it, saw more of the ship they had run through before they were struck in the leg, in the chest, but they did not see other Erwin, other Levi, other Mike and they missed them, missed Levi and Mike who had better aim, missed Erwin who would have never gotten himself cornered by traitorous gunslingers and breathing his last and bleeding, sinking.

            The flimsy daytime projections became louder, longer. They didn't care that Hange had duties, didn't wait for them to finish brushing their teeth. Hange was their servant, their vessel, and they could only obey, they only wanted to obey.

            When they returned to New York, Moblit relayed Hange's request for a sabbatical. Hange could not look them in the face, not any of them or it began louder and faster and an ache settled in their stomach and their skin burned furnace-hot and they wished, prayed, for a steel heart and coolant-leak tears.

            Isabel had found the parts Hange needed, every one. Hange left the private lab only to relieve themselves and shovel in food, tasteless, and return before the last bite was swallowed. Reluctantly, Moblit agreed not to breathe a word to Erwin. In return, Hange was not to leave Moblit's sight.

            Hange remembered every rivet. They recalled the placement of every beam and wire, every circuit and engine hum. They stationed guards at all hours, used every penny of the shadow fund allocated to themself to protect this thing that they would kill for, die for, in one lifetime, in two.

            For several days since their return to the city, Hange watched Moblit accept their annotated copies of division reports and commands to relay to division leaders with an uneasy quirk in his brow, a drag in his step. When they confronted him, he only shook his head, said he was being silly, but he swore Hange was getting them back to him no less mindful in their comments and commands but faster, always faster. Hange did not understand the problem. Moblit did not mention it again.

            Isabel did not come by often anymore. Soon, not at all.

            The dreams were too broad in scope, too infinitesimal in their specificity and too shameless in their ugliness and their beauty to ignore. When it was not the blue dream or the red dream, Hange saw little scraps, snapshots, snippets of moments as foreign as they were familiar. And still Hange wondered as their bare feet slapped on the cold tiles of the lab, wondered why they hadn't seen the other half of the stage, the rest of the actors. There were a dome-people and a dome-Survey Corps and dome-fields and dome-ships but there were no dome titans, no titans at all.

            They had seen diagrams and drawings in the pages of privates' expedition notes. They existed. They lived. But where, Hange did not know, did not see. They wanted to see them, touch them, know them. Would that fate weren't so cruel as to deny them this in two lifetimes, and it was a lifetime they witnessed, Hange knew. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a dream. They were right. They are right.

            The blue dream returned as Hange received the day's reports. They rushed Moblit away and locked the door. Other Erwin nodded yes and yes and yes, I understand, I know, I know. "This man," said Levi, could take him apart and shatter him and throw him into the sun. So Hange, this other Hange with steel in their hands shattered him, shattered them, and remade them. Teal sweat. Azure bones. Slate eye followed lapis followed brown, blue followed brown. Indigo chip. Navy sighs. No black, not this time. Hange grit their teeth, splashed water on their flushed face, awake, awake, stay awake, knees crushed into the floor, stay awake, palms flat on wet tile. The operation worked. They lived. They lived, but.

            But it had nearly been too much, too soon. Other Hange had anticipated it. They explained that the chips that would allow the two to speak, to think, to touch, to feel without the cumbersome walls of steel and stone and fire and even a million wretched lonely miles of vacuum, of void, would power on fast, too fast, that the connection's first heartbeat would beat hot and Hange knew it would overheat and would kill them both and Hange knew, knew from the moment the suggestion touched Erwin's ear that he would want it and demand it and so long before, Hange had taken the hammer and shattered themself and  opened their own nape to place in it a telepathic cushion, a reservoir for the burst of energy that might have shocked Erwin to his instantaneous death had it overwhelmed his chip in its first fevered heartbeat and embedded its burst pieces in his too-human brain.

            Other Levi palmed at the not-scar open-and-shut panel at his steel nape in question and turned, humbled, correctly, to other Mike, to whirl him around and flatten his collar and graze the bandage at his nape where he too, absorbed the initial installation shock, this one from Levi. It was the first and last time Hange caught this other Erwin, this admiral of starships and slayer of anonymous beasts, witnessed him looking at them with eyes like warbled glass and offering thank you's that shuddered in his too-human chest.

            It was too much and not nearly enough. The daytime visions became slower, more irregular. Within a week since their return, they stopped. In return, all the thousand trumpets that blared out of tune in their ear when they closed their eyes to sleep began to blow to one beat. Every one of those million cellos hummed as one, one by one by one. Hange were close. To what, or where, or when, they didn't know, they wanted to know, needed to know. It was not just an accident. It was not just a dream.

            Hange began sleeping near the lab, had laid down a thick comforter and an old pillow in an adjacent room, had shortened the unforgiveable distances that separated them from this all-knowing, unknowable thing with steel pillar gates cradling a glass womb. As the sun set on the high pitched whines and scrapes of welding and tearing, Moblit informed them that the commander and all division chiefs had gone to supervise an emergency security operation in the city. Hange did not catch the details. They were close. They were so close.

            It started when Hange put their head down for a second, just a second, and shut their eyes. It started when every one of those million cellos and trumpets and cymbals and all the other instruments that played for them this space-song of this other them and of this other life, started when they had at last found their conductor, when Hange had at last begged the show to go on. It had never been so clear.

            "He's in the chambers," Levi said. He and Hange leaned against long, sleek things, motorbikes of another age. Hange tapped at an interface where the steering would have been, hands meant to fit instead into hollows in the vehicle's sides. They tinkered with a map as Levi went on, staring forward, seeing with Erwin's eyes. They had tucked themselves between the shadow of two buildings, shacks stacked on shacks stacked on shacks.

            "They're asking him wh-" He sounded for all the world like he was out of breath, and Hange turned, stroked the embroidered wings on his back beneath broad, ratty fabrics pooled over him to hide the shine on his skin, the cross feathered emblem on his suit.

            "Relax. He gets your nerves too. What's happening?"

            Panels clicked and rearranged in the blues of his sclera, glass lashes curling lapis.

            "He's telling them. Council's just listening, one's staring into space, that piece of-"

            "Focus. What else?"

            "The dome cult half's against him on principle, they don't give a shit, those-"

            "We know, we know, but what about-"

            "Fuck it, live feed-" Levi shut his mouth but sound still came. Erwin's voice echoed in Hange's head. Although only Erwin and Levi could communicate in this way, one could extend access to basic sensory information to either buffer.

            "-dget issues notwithstanding, we have given you an excellent year," Erwin said. His voice echoed, as if he stood in a large hall, and the register of it rose to its most commanding and its most charming. He was speaking to important people. "Dome Maria experts estimated a sixteen percent drop in surface tension to Dome Maria despite sizeable budget cuts this quarter. The-"

            "From what?" Someone shouted. "Asteroids and space junk, that's what. This leviathan nonsense-" A great ruckus started before someone brought the congregation to order.

            "We are not here to debate a legend," Erwin said.

            "But it's true," Hange grit from between their teeth as Levi's emphatically shushed them.

            "-But the consequences of-"              

            "Listen," someone started, "jury's out on whether even these small fry "titans" you go on and on about are real, Smith. We ask you one thing, bring one speck of evidence back and-"

            "We have discussed why that is an impossibility time and time again, counselor," Erwin said,  "and all the Survey Armada's attempts at inviting a council representative to accompany us on an expedition have been categorically shut do-"

            "So you're tellin' me," another interrupted, "that we've been pouring capitol into your agency all these years and all it took to get these great results was tightening the purse? I mean, I would gladly keep-"

            "If you were not so consistently absent to prior proposal hearings, you would understand our misgivings concerning these cuts," Erwin said to a rising murmur of amused voices. A statesman called for order once more and Erwin continued.

            Hange flattened themself against the wall and shoved Levi alongside them as a pair of uniformed scouts sped past their alley. When they collected themselves, they returned to the feed.

            -eality is, switching on a generator of this size needs to be done expertly - gradually - in order to avoid a system-wide collapse-"

            "I knew it!" Someone shouted. The same man as before shouted for order and Hange winced at the room fell into such a cacophony that it was a marvel that the man had managed to reign it in at all. When all was quiet again, however, he spoke again, softly, pityingly:

            "Oh, Smith. Tell me you aren't aware of the new statute. There's a chance it may not have crossed your-"

            "I am. To you, Supreme Judge, and to the court, I declare I am aware that dissent toward the Sinean Generator in any fashion is grounds for execution. What I am offering, however, is not dissent but compromise. Compromise which benefits b-"

            "Treason!" Someone yelled, and the cacophony began again.

            This time, it was Levi who patted Hange's back, awkwardly settling on their jerking shoulder.

            "Pull up your pants, Zoe," he said softly. "It'll work."

            "What if Kr-"

            "He'll make it work."

            When the ruckus abated, Erwin explained, rapid-fire to dissuade further interruptions, that switching on a generator of such a scale to compensate for Dome Sina's increasing energy needs all at once would overthrow countless natural phenomena, not to mention requiring recalibration to nearly all dome- and ship-regulation instruments, a process that would stall production and drive up costs when the inevitable error results in late shipments, or none at all. The unpredictable effect on the electromagnetic field surrounding the domes alone warranted a more guided implementation of the system, not to mention the effect of the energy outburst on the behavior of nearby titans.

            What Erwin did not mention, what Levi mumbled about incessantly over Erwin's rhetoric, knowing Erwin could not speak it aloud but regretting it all the same, was that the delay would also give rebels in the two surrounding domes enough time to overthrow local overseers and demand their rightful share of the energy the solar generator would produce.

            The hall was silent, so silent at Erwin's last word that Hange nearly asked Levi if the connection had been compromised, though Hange could still hear Erwin's breathing loud in their ears, feel the pummel of his heart as if it were their own. The Supreme Judge called for a vote.

            "No," Levi seethed.

            "It's okay. It's okay, we knew it would happen," Hange said. "They take the preliminary vote and if it fails, Erwin can still appeal."

            "Do we have enough delegates from Rose?" Levi asked.

            "Yeah. Enough and we can override. It's oka-"

            "And Maria?"

            "Yes-"

            "Are you sure?"

            "Yes, yes, yes," Hange chanted. "Why do you think Erwin put us here? The second he appeals, we start rounding them up, got it? Got it?"

            He nodded. Hange watched Levi's fingers curl, uncurl, felt a titanium heart beat for another, felt their own beat for two, for three. Mike was at the helm of their largest, fastest starship. He captained their last resort.

            The vote was completed. 232 to 68. The motion failed.

            Heat radiated off of Levi though he was utterly motionless.

            "Come on, appeal, appeal-" Hange whispered.

            In their minds' ear, another voice entered, echoed, warbled, a broken, wakening thing. It didn't sound like it belonged to the closed-door congregation at all. It didn't sound like anything Hange heard before.

            Hange shuddered. "Did you hear tha-"

            "No," Levi said, seethed. " _No_."

            "Is that him? Is that the voice Erwin said...said he was...was hearing..." Hange asked, breathless. They were outside and yet there was no air, so little air to breath. It was him.

            Memories came to Hange of sleepless nights, of Erwin begging them on hands and knees, pleading that there must be some way to end that voice, to shut it down before he consumed him, before he became him, it, whatever it was that began to sow doubt in his heart and lace his thoughts with traitorous desires, flights of arrogance-

_I can't hear my own thoughts anymore. Hange, I'm beginning to believe it isn't some trick or villain that poisons me. It's me. I know it's me, my thoughts, they - but it's not me, I have no reason to, I could never- Hange, I would never- these thoughts don't ask that I betray only you or Levi or the Corps or the government but all of humanity. He or It or whatever this is wants me to-_

            -and Hange had heard more than enough and had cut themself open, had cut Mike open and him open, had cut Levi open and it worked, it worked, this voice had never appeared again, never again, until.

            "Tell Erwin to get out," Hange said. "Tell him now-"

            "Shut up. I can force it out like last time, force it to-" Levi's brows knit and Hange shifted away. His skin was scalding. The fabric steamed.

            The voice returned, that same warbling hum. Hange had the impression that it was somehow speaking to Erwin alone, that it deafened only the two eavesdroppers.

            "I can't hear anything," Hange said frantically, "I can't hear Erwin either, is he blocking him out? What is this? Who is this? Why-?"

            "It's Kronos," Levi said.

            "I hope you're not just thinking _fuck off_ over and over, are you?"

            "It worked before?" Levi yelled. White steam coiled out of nostrils, then his ears and mouth.

            "Wait," Hange said, and thrust open the hood of the bike. "Your coolant's leaking, you have to stop, whatever you're doing-"

            "We did this," Levi yelled, jabbing a finger at his neck, "so I could keep him- keep him away from this, whatever the fuck this is, this-"

            "Do you think Kronos let you think it worked that first time?"

            "Fuck. Fuck it all," he snarled. The steam didn't abate. "We were ready. He thought of _everything_ -"

            "Levi, your-"

            "-I had one fucking order and I fucked it. I fucked it all-"

            Hange grabbed him, tore into Levi's suit and was ready to open him up when Levi shoved them away, leapt on the bike and sped off without a word. As Hange rushed to follow, the voice crept away and the congregation was clear again. Erwin had been too distracted to declare an appeal in time. It was over.

            "We're too far away," Hange yelled. The comm crackled, not nearly as clear as the feed to Erwin's chip that still remained with Hange's. "Levi!"

            Still, he rode. Past shanty towns and strays and too-large rodents. Past frozen lakes, past garbage rivers.

            Then he stopped. Hange stopped, too. Hundreds of miles away, the closed-door congregation announced the immediate execution of Admiral Erwin Smith.

            "We have to go. Mike knows. We have to leave," Hange said, nearly tipping off their bike as they shook Levi with blistered, screaming fingers, with eyes fractured with tears that Levi could never shed, demanded he never shed again, but now Hange wondered if he wanted to, wanted someone to see, wanted himself to see.

            He followed, mute, as they raced back to the fringes of Dome Maria, to follow their one remaining path, a path Erwin predicted and explained over volleys of cocky promises and hopeful boasts, over all their dreams of freedom within the domes where there was never such a thing, never at all. Hange recalled the mountainous stocks of food and fuel that Erwin demanded be stored in each starship, demanded that each ship should be able to fly for centuries and now Hange knew why, knew as they heard the last vote cast in favor of dissolving and prosecuting the Survey Armada.

            Hange switched off their chip entirely. They knew the procession. They knew the charges. They did not want to hear them again in ceremony, in self justifying, animal rapture. They demanded Mike do the same and then Levi, especially Levi, who felt and heard and touched and felt all that Erwin saw, all that he felt. Levi said nothing. Hange wondered how it felt to think goodbye, to feel goodbye.

            They snuck out of Dome Maria and rode on past barren fields and oxen-people.

            "They're attaching him to the generator," Levi said suddenly.

            "Shut it off!" Hange yelled.

            "They're going to switch it on," Levi said coldly, riding ahead, "and they're going to roast him and show their servants and children and chattel what happens to disbelievers like him, to rats like him-"

            It wasn't Levi talking. That wasn't his voice.

            Hange slammed into his bike. He swerved, and Hange hit him again. Levi was thrown. Hange rolled to break their own fall and wrestled him to the cold, hard ground, crying out as their suit and skin blistered and tore at contact and still they moved to flip him over and tear the chip out if they had to.

            "Get out. Get out of him," Hange begged, throttling him uselessly with their peeling hands as he stared ahead, unseeing. Finally, Hange tore open his chest, threw open the hood of the thrumming bike, ripped through its connective tissue and thrust the live wires into his heart.

            He jerked bodily as Hange leapt clear. They returned as his eyes blinked their shattered lashes and his tongue lolled, trying to move.

            "Find Earth," Levi said in Erwin's timbre. Hange yelled in frustration. It was wrong. What they did was wrong. Kronos used their connection, Hange was sure of it, may have prevented Levi from shutting it off, from knowing how, from wanting to. Uniformed agents sped towards them from the border of Dome Rose.

            "Fuck!" Hange shouted, throttling him uselessly with bleeding hands, scarlet smearing his pearly finish. "We were supposed to do this together! He was supposed to shut it o-"

            "Please," Levi, Erwin, said. "Find Earth. Find yourself-"

            Levi shuddered. Fluids pooled out of seams in his skin. Erwin, Levi, reached for them, hesitated, aborted the movement, knew it would hurt them, and Hange moved their hand to his face to cradle it only to shudder and jerk away as scalding fluid, white and black and grey trickled from his mouth, his ears, even his eyes, the mock-tears spilling as his body seized and his skin was painted gold, as Hange was painted gold, as the sky erupted with the distant spectacle of lights decorating Dome Sina and even parts of Dome Rose as they lit and swam in Hange's eyes. The generator had been switched on. Erwin was dead. Levi, who was his conduit, his confidante and his soul, was dead.

            Hange could not touch him, lift him. The border agents were approaching. Siren-painted, blue and red. Hange couldn't touch him, couldn't hear his final breath. They were miles away before he took it.

            A scout ship spotted Hange and stopped to extract them. When it docked into a larger starship, Hange raced for the bridge and took their position at the helm shaking, hands utterly ruined and drawing muttered gasps and oaths from crew members.

            "Hange Zoe assumes command." All Survey Armada ships were to leave Dome airspace immediately. Their channels hummed with reports of encroaching Dome Patrol ships closing in.

            "Is that Admiral Zoe, now?" Mike said gravely.

            "It is."

            Hange hissed as med lab crew treated their hands.

            "East Dome port off-line," Nanaba reported from her own ship hovering on the other end of Dome Maria.

            "West Dome port off-line," reported a pair of scout ships.

            "North is our best bet," Mike said. "There's no sneaking past now. Look at the place."

            The sky swarmed with Dome Patrol ships. They transmitted hails on all frequencies, all of them ignored. All them converged, bathed in the golden light of an illuminated Sina as Dome Maria shuddered violently above them.

            "Report," Hange demanded as all channels devolved into their own private chaos. Dome Patrol ships hovered mutely, seemingly as shocked as they were. As Armada ships converged in the North, the dome shook again, visibly bounced.

            "They just had to turn on the lights," Mike muttered.

            "It's their own fault," said Nanaba, but the tremor in her judgment betrayed her. Maria shook again, more violently still.

            "What's happening?" A junior navigator asked. They watched the viewport. "Where are the stars?" The sky was blackened.

            "Behind them," Hange said.

            "Behind what?" He asked, but the chief navigator shushed him. The patrol ships began to arm themselves.

            "Admiral?" Mike asked.

            "Standby," Hange said.

            "We have to engage," Nanaba yelled. "They're surrounding us - I have children on board!"

            "Standby," Hange said. Hange stared at the wildly fluctuating numbers on the dome integrity meters. The generator's sudden grand opening had disturbed the instruments, but if Hange could parse the patterns through the noise-

            A Dome Patrol ship fired a warning shot beside the approaching colony cruiser.

            "Admiral!" Nanaba yelled.

            Dome Maria shattered.

            Light poured into Hange's eyes. A Survey Corps medic knelt over them and moved them on their side.

            "Mob-" they started. The nurse hushed them and continued checking their pupil response, then their vitals. As their eyes grew accustomed to the glare, Hange caught Moblit nearby, arms hugging himself, face white.

            "Mo-" The medic shushed them again and checked their head, hands and elbows for injury. Hange smacked them away and demanded with a leaden tongue, "What happened? What are you doing?" Hange rounded on the medic. "Are you authorized to be here? You aren't, aren't you. Erwin's gonna-"

            "Hange please," Moblit finally said, and knelt beside them. "You were... were, you-"

            "You were seizing," the medic said. "Can you tell me what might have-"

            "No! I wasn't- I was- god, I almost - it was so clear, I saw it, I saw it-" Hange said. Suddenly, the enormity of what they saw hit them, hit them all at once, and they laughed loudly, bitterly, as they slid on the tear-wet tile trying to sit up.

            "Mister Berner, " the medic said, "Do they have a history of hall-"

            "Out!" Hange shouted. "Please," they whispered. "Please go away."

            The medic was unconvinced. Hange remained on the floor and twined their hands, pleaded wordlessly to dear, misguided Moblit.

            After a small millennium, Moblit whispered something to the medic and argued her out of the room. When she left, Hange started laughing again, drying tile growing slippery wet again.

            "He died, Moblit. They killed him."

            Moblit returned to kneel beside them but froze when they heard the words.

            "Who- do- do you mean Erwin Smith?"

            Hange's eyes snapped wide open. "What do you mean? How did you know I meant- Is he-"

            "He'- he's okay," Moblit said slowly, anxiously. There was an... incident at Panacea, he's-he's-"

            "Was it the council? Did they get him here too? They... they-" Hange stopped at Moblit's perfectly baffled expression.

            "O-Officer, I just got word. Commander Smith and-and Agent Abrams-"

            "I have to sleep again. I have to finish it. I have to see it. Please, Moblit, I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy, you know I'm not- you know-" Hange said and it was undignified and they knew but they needed to relive it, needed to see it, to finish it. It couldn't be the end. It couldn't be all there was. It had to mean something. It had to begin. It had to end.

            "It's not just a dream. Please. It means something. Please believe me. No one will believe me. Please. Please."

            They watched Moblit watch them, then turn to the machine, the intricately welded and pieced together and sliced and wired and raised thing that no one, Hange least of all, knew the first thing about, and yet it stood, and yet it was made, and it meant something, had to mean something.

            "Okay," Moblit said, and Hange almost didn't hear it. He insisted they return to a proper bed in that case, and Hange bit their complaints back and returned home for the first time in weeks and slammed three doses of Halcion when Moblit looked away.

            It returned. It returned from the very beginning. Hange saw themselves grow up in a shanty slum in the outskirts of Maria. They saw themselves join the Survey Armada. They watched Erwin smile and joke and command loyalty from every last bone in every last member of the Armada and they saw the sky ripen with his death, saw Levi shudder with it, saw the sky rupture with it.

            The thick, tensile strands that layered and stretched from one end of the rock on which the domes stood ruptured and split like a popped balloon. Black spilled into gold as the ship shuddered with the advance of the encroaching, blackened hoard, gold backlighting the faint, smoky outlines of creatures moved through air and void with the effortless lick and sway of a flame, each one no smaller than their largest cruiser, each one no slower than their fastest scout.

            Hange ordered all Armada ships to slip through the horde on minimum power as the mindless moths swarmed toward the candle that was Sina.

            The ship swayed and shuddered. It was not still for a moment. It did not know peace for a second, walls siren-painted, blue and red.

            In all the merciless pounding and thrashing against the hull, Hange might have thought they were not moving at all save for the instruments that were hurriedly recalibrated after the system-wide disturbance Erwin had predicted would come after the generator's switch. They could not see for all the thick, engorging black. Though individually transparent but for an inky blackness that caught in just the right light, the engorging mass of the creatures blocked out every moon, every star.

            They were several tens of thousands kilometers away from the domes when the shuddering lessened, but only just. Mike announced that twenty of their forty ships were unaccounted for. Many of them had been the smaller scouts that may not have had sufficient thrust to slip through.

            It was maddening. For hours, for days, for weeks, they shuddered and shook as the swarm pummeled past. Nearly all personnel were redirected to repair the battered hull. Then, she came.

            "Admiral, our instruments are down," Mike reported.

            "Clarify."

            "Everything's suddenly dead. Navigation, Weapons systems, all gone."

            "Titan resistance?"

            "No change. They're still coming."

            "Same here," Nanaba reported, and nearly all ships captains followed suit. As if on cue, Hange's instruments, too, stuttered and fell silent one by one by one.

            Hange ordered all ships to launch class one probes, their largest and most sophisticated. As they traveled, their path aided by the complementing force of the swarming horde, a three dimensional map began to form  on all ships' viewports. One of them strayed closest to the domes and sent back readings.

            "Dome Rose is gone," Hange announced over the incessant metallic shudder. They gripped their station computer. Their bandages bled.

            "We're the last," muttered another Junior navigator, sweat pooling in his palms, at his brow. "There's no way Sina can hold out now. Humanity's finished. Everything we've ever done," he blustered, "it's all been for nothi-" Hange slapped him.

            "Is this because I'm not him?" Hange demanded. The navigator did not register anything for a moment over the shock of being grasped at the front by the Admiral of the Armada. "Is it because Erwin Smith is dead? You do not fight for me. You don't fight for Erwin Smith, or yourself or your girlfriend or your father or that stray you found by the wayside in a Maria shanty," Hange said, "you fight for all of humanity, for the future, for home."

            Hange returned to their station and continued monitoring the map blooming away as the probes soared on. The junior navigator returned to his own quietly, and there was no chatter left, nothing left to be said. Hange curled their nails into their palm and allowed them to dig in savagely. They should have taken him. They should have wiped his cheek. They should have said goodbye.

            Erwin did not live to see the titans fall. He did not live to see Earth. Levi did not live to avenge him.

            The map ended curiously, as if a great wall was preventing further readings. The faster probes had even bounced off it and veered into opposite directions. Hange displayed the abnormality on all bridge stations.

            "Theories," Hange ordered.

            None of their star charts corroborated the structure or location of the mass. There was supposed to be nothing there, nothing of the size suggested by the dead zone readings that could have moved there so suddenly. Certainly no planetary or stellar object moved so quickly, and this was far greater than any one star.

            "She's here," Hange muttered. "Nifa, how soon can we enter FTL?"

            The chief navigator frowned and said, "Not in this weather. We need to get clear of the tita-"

            A bridge engineer piped in, goggles fogged from the strain of holding himself upright on the shuddering craft "-but we can't get clear without more thrust. The second we do that, the titans'll have a lock on us. Right now, we're bits of space rock to them, they're so mad for that shining coin Sina's made of itself that we're invisible."

            "We need to enter FTL yesterday," Hange said, equal parts furious and awed.

            "Admiral?" Mike said.

            "See how big it is, Mike?"

            "My team tells me the dead zone's the size of three standard Earth orbits and counting. Past the probes' range, it just keeps going and going-"

            "It's not a zone. It's a tooth."

            "Hang- Admiral, I think there was some interference. What did-"

            "You heard me," Hange said. "You heard me perfectly. It's her. We found her."

            "No," Nifa said, watching the updating probe map. "She found us."

            Hange ordered all ships to switch on all weapons systems and fire a focused volley of shots straight into the still-thickening horde and activate maximum thrust on their mark. There was no guarantee that the shots would puncture a hole through the mass of them - they had been flying on minimum power for nearly two months with only the barest change in resistance- but it was different now. She was here. This beautiful, awful creature, the leviathan of Hange's dreams, she was here. And she was baring her many teeth. She was opening wide.

            Erwin did not live to see the titans fall. Levi did not live to avenge him. But Hange lived to see their precious monster, their toothy darling.

            "I'm sorry," Hange said to no one in particular. You'll have to eat me later, Hange thought. I have to find Earth. I have to come home.

            Hange gave the order and the sequence began. Each ship fired and flew faster and father through their tunnels of wispy titan remains. Their opposing race into the black mire against the forward momentum of the horde meant that as long as the ships kept firing and maintaining the same speed, any surrounding titans who may have detected them and wished to pursue could not have fought against billions and billions of their brothers.

            As they shuddered ever more, Mike laughed and said to Hange on a private channel that he thought Erwin was a gambler but this - this is a more appropriate send off for him, for them. They would avenge them, Mike said. They would commit the ultimate injustice in the face of this beast if they lived, if only one of them lived.

            They flew for days until the smallest ships warned that if they continued in this way, they would not have enough energy to slip into FTL. Hange knew. They had practiced their response for months.

            "Every ship," Hange announced, "will maintain fire until all but their final FTL reserves run out. If there is no opening by that critical juncture," and Hange paused and continued through grit teeth, "then you have a choice. Continue firing until your reserves run out. You may reach the other side just in time, or you will become stranded. Or," Hange said. "Arm every explosive and warhead in the heart of your ship and enter FTL." Nifa inhaled sharply. Goggles sniffed behind them.

            "You will be forcibly propelled against the swarm. If you reach the outside, congratulations. If you do not, you will blow open a hole in the swarm large enough for the remaining ships to enter and save them the cost of firing additional shots. You will be our path to freedom."

            Hange moved away from the mic to collect a shuddering breath. "It's been a pleasure serving with each and every one of you. Your last Admiral would be proud. I'm proud."

            One by one, farewells and well wishes streamed in as the largest scouts and smallest destroyers were the first to go. They plummeted into that dark night, and sometimes, the fleet would pick up the light from the blast on their sensors, and sometimes they would see the visible light with their own eyes, witness the angry, final, undefeated flame scorch through thousands, millions of the black creatures, blowing their flimsy, powerful, beautiful, terrifying bodies into nothingness.

            Yet as they passed each hole in the swarm, an opening that closed nearly as quickly as it was born, they still did not breech the other side. There was still no starlight. There was still no Earth.

            Explorer ships bade their farewells next. In their final moments, the twinkling debris could be mistaken for starlight.

            Next came bulky, fuel-demanding destroyers.

            "I recorded this as we're moving, well, hah, crawling through these things at minimum thrust," Mike's voice echoed in Hange's ears. Tears started, unbidden, unbecoming, Hange didn't care, dared anyone else to care.

            "It's weird, it's been a month since Erwin died, and Levi. We're really doing it. We're really punching out of this thing. We knew it was thick, this...titan soup surrounding the domes, but if he knew just how much... just how many..." The recording was interrupted briefly. Shocked voiced echoed in the background. "Sorry, that was a big knock. Good call that you two told us to design regenerative hulls. And to stock food. And to stock nukes in the center of each ship in case...well. I've always admired you, Hange. Feared you, too, but I don't think one can happen without the other so," He laughed. It was shyly genuine. Hange wondered how often he made that sound.

            "Anyway. I know we disagreed in the past, I don't even remember why. I'm sorry for every moment I gave you hell, gave you anything other than my complete respect and love. The guys in our Scout ships are starting to run dry so I'm expecting some...well, something. I don't know why I haven't made one of these before. I don't know why I thought I was immortal, why... why, if Erwin could punch out the clock, if Levi could, I wouldn't follow behind pretty close. Okay. Hah, this is running way too long. I hope I have a chance to record something a little more...I don't know. Put together."

            "One more thing. Erwin would kill me from beyond the grave if I didn't remind you. He wanted me to. I want to," he said.

            "Don't stop believing. If there are five ships left, don't stop believing. If there is one left, don't stop believing. If you hear your engine stall and your life support fail, don't stop believing. If you're the last human being left in this universe or any universe, don't stop believing. We'll find Earth. Each and every one of us will find Earth when you do, when one of us does. We'll come home."

            The message cuts.

            Colony ships follow. Hange cannot get through Nanaba's farewell recording. They could not forget the sound of her voice as she announced her intent to enter FTL. Fearful, surely, but with a note of relief. As if she was about to leave the house and meet an old friend.

            Soon, the Armada was one in name only. An eerily peaceful silence settled in the two remaining ships as they fired and tunneled, fired and tunneled. Sina had long ago ruptured. The news drifted through their ears, unimportant, the name nearly unfamiliar, a name from another lifetime. What probes remained operative had been recalibrated to transmit signals directly to Hange's ship. The map was ever-changing, but one constant remained. They were increasingly surrounded by the dead zone, by Her. By her shutting maw.

            "Starship Atlantis will enter FTL in two minutes, Admiral," the only other remaining ship announced.

            "May you reach the other side," Hange said, fully aware that no matter how the ship fared, the soldiers within will indeed reach another side.

            "Maybe this one will do it. It's been days," Nifa said. "It can't be much longer."

            "They'll do it," said another. "That ship's as large as ours, if it can't punch through-"

            Their sensors picked up a massive burst of energy.

            The last recordings were being watched. Some realized, the look of understanding hitting them oddly similar, that they did not have to record anything. There was no one else to listen to their last thoughts, their final memories, their fleeting regrets. There was no one left.

            Hange kept an obsessive eye on their fuel indicators. Between the constant firing and maximum thrust, they would not last long.

            _Please. Find Earth. Find yourself._

            One hour remained. Find yourself. How exceedingly sentimental, even for Erwin.

            Thirty minutes remained. Find yourself. It angered them, now. They were not supposed to be. They were supposed to face their impending death peacefully, gracefully. Fuck it. Find yourself? Hange found themself extending the inevitable. They found themself offering hope, false hope, in the face of guaranteed slaughter, in suicide. They truly were as mad as the dome cults had made them out to be. They did this to themselves. Hange did this to themself.

            _Please. Find Earth. Find yourself._

            Twenty minutes remained. They could have lived in squalor, servitude, slavery, yes, but lived, existed. They could have existed. Barely existed. Tilling an island surrounded by beasts.

            Hange wandered the ship, meeting every deck hand and crew member. They passed their hand along the wall, the bandages long gone, but hands scarred, still. They should have touched him. They should have taken his body. They should have said goodbye.

            They passed Erwin's quarters. They were theirs now, but they had never made any attempt to move in, never paid it any but a passing glance. They went inside.

            It was as it had always been. They had sat up with Erwin countless times debating star charts and propulsion theory. Like everything about the man, it was Spartan but elegant, inviting. A few books remained in the drawers, books they had both crossed things out of and written in, often crossing out the other's notes and supplementing their own. Hange curled onto the bed. The covers slid off the pillow.

            Their breath caught. There was a letter, an actual, physical letter on the pillow and tucked beneath the comforter. Hange threw the books against the opposite wall. This was just like him, the bastard. Hange almost considered leaving it, never reading it, never having known what the coward had not been able to say to their face.

            Fifteen minutes. Hange reached toward it, turned it over. _For Hange._ Of course.Of course it had a useless, official seal as if it mattered, as if anything mattered.

 

_Deck 5, Room 7H. Doorlock: 789HJS_

_Transfer Code: 7H85SKS. Coordinates: 4907-87-8-933649558-875-JOHJ-5749-963_

_Do not let Kronos find the core. Do not stop. Do not regret._

            Ten minutes. Hange raced to the deck they never frequented and to the room they'd never seen, slammed the doorlock code into a hidden console and locked the door behind them like a person possessed. Steel pillars wrapped around an oblong central pod. Dust coated the thing. It had not been seen for a long time. The overhead lights did not even work.

            Hange palmed at the thing until they found an interface near the pod and entered the code and the coordinates, reread an Admiral's last wishes, his goodbye. They moved with a possessed frenzy. Whatever this was, they needed to do it fast. At the last digit, the glass pod opened. They rounded it as fluid sloshed within and cords of all lengths and types drifted atop it. The depression at the bottom of the translucent not-quite-water was decidedly shaped for a human body.

            Five minutes. There was no debating it. Erwin had wanted it, ordered it. He did not ask Hange to understand, did not ask anyone to understand but to trust, and to do.

            Hange stripped to their underthings and slipped inside. As they touched the fluid, the cords began to wander as if sentient, and Hange froze as one sought out her tentative foot and burrowed inside not quite painlessly, but certainly not as excruciatingly as it appeared. Before Hange debated whether the fluid had numbing properties, they slipped entirely inside. Panic threaded through them as the pod sealed itself shut and the fluid rose. The cords slipped into them, the sensation mollified by some sort of numbing agent or hallucinogen, they were sure.  Tubes prodded at their nose and between it and the rising fluid, Hange chose to bear the sensation of them prodding, slipping in, likewise with their mouth, even their ears. Their eyes prickled as the fluid rose entirely. They could not see. They could not hear. Soon, they could not feel.

            They gasped awake, breathing as if they arose from a pond or a still lake. But Hange was not in their bed. They coughed and sputtered, pulling out a great many tubes from their mouth and nose and sides. They felt hands on them. They yelped and thrashed.

            "Easy," they heard. Hange opened their eyes.

            "Listen, I...I can explain," Hange sputtered. "It's just that...okay, I really can't... can't explain." They felt other tubes and cords slipping out of their skin, receding.

            "Just wait for them. Let them do their job," someone said.

            Hange sniffed. Their eyes stilll burned, still shut, but they cautioned a glance, a sliver of white light. "I haven't seen you before. What's your station?"

            The man grinned shyly, a touch sadly. Hange thrashed suddenly, remembering.   

            "I have to get to the bridge, I have to, I have to give the order-"

            "Please calm down, Captain."

            "Captain? I guess that's only fitting now-"

            The tubes were finally all gone. Medics Hange hadn't noticed before rushed in to stem any  bleeding and check their vitals. Hange looked around as they did, ignoring the man's blush as he hovered over them with a change of clothing. The machine, whatever it was, was clean, much cleaner than before. It was even clearer now in the light, whereas they had slipped in before in almost-darkness. Maybe they had imagined the dust. Hange watched the medics then, watched them work entirely unbothered by the circumstances. Surely, Survey Armada medics had steel hearts.

            When they left, the man handed them their clothes and turned, ever the gentleman.

            "I assume Mister Smith told you-"

            "Told me jack," Hange muttered.

            It was some time before the man spoke again. "Did he tell you... anything?"

            "Listen buddy, I found some digits in his room and-"

            "But... didn't he tell you to find yourself?"

            Hange zipped up their suit and rushed out of the room. The man followed.

            "Yeah yeah some feel-good shit, no time for that, we're almost-"

            "Wait! You don't understand. We're in no danger!"

            Hange bolted to the bridge. As they stepped off the lift, the bridge crew stood and offered their congratulations. They made it. They had broken through. It was over.

            Hange did not recognize a single face.

            "Where's Nifa?" They asked.

            An entirely unfamiliar face wearing the chief navigator uniform stepped in, apologetic. "Nifa served on the Atlantis, Captain."

            "No. Why are you lying? Where's Nifa? Where's Goggles and Henson and- and-"

            The man finally caught up. He apologized profusely and lead them away from the bridge, succeeding only as long as the shock had robbed Hange of thought.

            When they entered the adjacent hallway, Hange rounded on him. "If I don't get an answer _immediately_ -"

            "Mister Smith was our liaison," the man said quickly. "He told us how to build the machine, he only told us to expect you at a certain time and-and here you are. When he was executed for protesting the Sinean Regenerator-"

            "What? You mean the Generator?"

            The man swallowed thickly. "N-no, in this, I mean in my, in our side, Sina switched on a regenerative device meant to materialize simple objects, but the council demanded it produce an entire palace and the power surge shocked the dome-"

            Hange grasped him by his front and shook him. "You're lying. You're lying. Why is everyone lying?"

            "Mister Smith told you to find yourself," the man rattled off quickly under their tightening grip, "To switch bodies. It was senseless, he, they, said, if, if the Hange Zoe in this universe died when those dome patrol agents snuck in and starting shooting and I-I mean they were almost dead, they were alive, but the brain damage... but the transfer resolves it, the memories return, the brain matter is restructured as long as the b-bodies on both ends are still viable and and and-"

            Hange let go of him.

            "I know this is all, this is all new and, and frightening, but if- no, no please-"

            Hange pushed against the deck hallway and slid down until they sat with their back to the wall.

            "No no no no, please," the man spoke into his comm, "please send medical team to deck five-"

            "Wait," Hange said. The man lowered the device and returned Hange's look, afraid and a little hopeful.

            "Strange voices, execution, a physical letter in this day and age, fuck it, why the hell not throw in parallel universes..."

            "Well, it's not exactly, I mean it's similar but it's, I mean..." he drifted away as Hange looked on listlessly.

            "I abandoned them. I need to go back."

            "You can't."

            "Really?" Hange snapped. "I can voodoo my way into another reality but I can't step back?"

            "It's too risky."

            Hange stared, realizing. "You don't know if they survived either."

            "It's not a time machine. Calibrating the precise coordinates took years and only because we had Smith, a partner on the other side advising himself and the rest of the crew on this end. And-and even if we do line it up perfectly-"

            "You could be shooting my brain into wreckage."

            "I'm sorry. There are... there are too many variables to be sure."

            Hange did not speak for some time. Finally, they asked, "Mike? Nana? Did anyone else... just _one_ other ship..."

            He shook his head gravely. When he spoke, his voice was faint.

            "We're the last."

            Hange turned away. They drifted about like a mote on a swell. Agents familiar and unfamiliar saluted them, congratulated them. The ship was rejoicing. They walked into the observation deck, the room itself small for there was never anything to see from it but dense, empty black, never anything to feel but the press of a billion unnatural bodies. It was never used but for storage.

            It was full to bursting. As the door slid open, the whoops and cheers and cries became louder still as crew and bridge personnel shuffled Hange closer, still closer to the black viewport, but.

            But it was not black anymore. If ten thousand Survey Armada starships ruptured at once, the glare would not fill the sky like this. There were stories. There were drawings. They were all a farce. Nothing compared. They will not doubt again.

            The observation deck was nearly empty but for Hange and one other. The others had long since returned to their duties.

            As the man approached hesitantly, Hange looked him over.

            "Who are you? What's your station?"

            The man lowered his eyes. "I knew you, we, we met years ago, on Maria and I know it's not you- I know I-I-I wasn't there, wasn't there for you on your side, wasn't born or born too late or too early or or or something, but I want to, I want to make it right. I mean, not that I, that that only I can make it right, I mean, oh, I mean-" He swallowed. "Moblit Berner. I'm your chief S-science officer."

            As Hange offered their hand, Moblit offered two of his own, as if he couldn't decide between them.

            "You're wrong," Hange said. Moblit did not argue, did not preemptively dissuade. He only watched the flickers of the universe, only listened.

            "We're the first," Hange said.

            The world spun. Hange had the vaguest sensation of dropping, falling, drowning.

            They woke with a gasp, as if emerging from a still lake, a pond, a pod. But they were only in a bed. There was a vase on the nightstand beside them, flush with lilacs. They hadn't put them there.

            Hange padded out of their room. They caught Moblit in their two-step kitchen dozing on a counter. They patted them gently awake and he jumped out of his sleep as if he were waiting for it and locked bleary eyes on Hange.

            "Is everything alright? Are you hurt? Did you dream? Are you hungry? Is-"

            Hange embraced him. They didn't hear him over their iron grip on his shoulders. Only when he whined a little and patted their shoulder did they lessen their grip only a little.

            "I finally had a dream about you," Hange said, still drowsy, uninhibited more than usual with the last dregs of sleep.

            Moblit didn't say anything for a time. Hange didn't expect him to. Suddenly, he asked in a small, cautious voice, "Did you see what you wanted to see?"

            Hange squeezed again. They didn't answer.

          

           

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading. Please please do leave feedback, even negative (especially negative). I've never wrestled a story with so many moving parts before so I'd love to know what's working, what's not, what's exciting that I can keep doing, what parts you're skipping so I can cut em, all that. Since there's only so much I can cover in one story (and trust me, I can write this one forever, time allowing), I WILL focus on the dreamers you most want to see. 
> 
> I am going to give this one another once over when my head cools down but do feel free to point me to typos or weird fragments anyway. Thank you!


	12. Run

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [Daughter - Run](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psiILfa-G1c&ab_channel=Daughter)

 

Levi pulled Erwin out of the crumbling maintenance chamber. Erwin groaned at the strain on his ribs and landed on all fours on grass, real grass. It was still soaked from the recent rains. It was blindingly green.

He rose with gritted teeth and the two wove into a dense thicket of trees. Shouts echoed occasionally through the brush.

“There's a Corps supply cache nearby,” Erwin said. He led the way as Levi watched their rear.

It was a good twenty minutes before they reached it. They didn't dare speak above a whisper, not without putting several miles between themselves and the nearest Intermipol agent. When they did, Levi craned his neck and Erwin stooped, and more often than not, either one or the other missed their mark and felt the other's breath billow over their throat.

Supply caches were hidden with a great deal of discretion, and even knowing one's exact coordinates would have one rooting around trying to find the loose brick or the foliage-smothered trapdoor. It would not take long this time.

A pair of armed and uniformed men with INTERMIPOL emblazoned in sterile white on their arms, fronts and backs loitered in a secluded section of the brush. Levi tensed beside him as he crouched behind a tree trunk. Assault rifles bobbed on their backs.

“Bust,” Levi whispered. “Let's keep-”

“Don't move,” Erwin demanded, and stepped into the clearing.

One agent began to turn. The other cracked the butt of his rifle over his companion's head.

As Erwin opened his mouth to speak, the man mouthed _NO_ and waved his arms. With his hands, he signed:

_Tapped. Can't switch off without alerting command center._

Erwin nodded. As Levi emerged, the Corps' spy assured his superiors that the crack was the sound of him dropping his rifle. Levi scoffed at the excuse.

When the superior was placated, Erwin signed: _Report._

The spy lifted his helmet visor and glanced once at Levi before signing: _Headquarters occupation began at 0900._ _Nanaba flown to Intermipol HQ in Munich for questioning._ _Your retrieval guard was_ _found and detained_ _. Zackarius unaccounted for. City blockaded._

Erwin thanked him despite the ringing in his ears and ordered the man to return to his post. He was sure Levi had bitten straight through his cheek to keep from speaking. As they turned to leave, the man threw off his helmet and tapped his fist to his cheek. He cocked his head at the unconscious agent.

He needed an alibi. Levi obliged him.

They headed deeper into the thicket. Erwin's chest burned at the strain. When it had been some time since distant shouts and radio chatter drifted after them, he slowed. Levi scouted ahead, and, convinced they were, for the moment, safe, doubled back and pulled Erwin to a seat into the cradle of a fallen trunk.

He groaned. Erwin nearly wished they were pursued with more fervor if it would lend him more adrenaline to dampen the sensation of his ribs scraping against one another into a fine powder. Levi stared fixedly ahead. For a time, the only sound was their recovering breath.

“Fuck,” Levi whispered.

Erwin hummed in agreement.

“What now?”

“Now,” Erwin said, “we return to headquarters.”

“Do you and I have different interpretations of “occupation”?

“Not without an escort, of course.”

“And what powerful friend are we gonna hold hands with this time?”

“Pixis.”

Levi raised a brow. “Again?”

“Believe it or not, my calling on him was a favor to him, not the other way around.”

“You're shitting me.”

Erwin smiled. “He's incredibly bored. To him, Panacea was a lovely little diversion. And for all its hiccups, the operation was a success. The tower was secured. No civilians were killed. Even as we rode to The Ring, an agent informed me that he'd extended to us every invitation under the sun. Even offered a contingent of the National Guard to accompany us. I refused.”

“Why?”

“Intermipol would be incentivized to make a better friend out of him if it suspected we had an ally in such a position.”

Levi watched him. “Do we?”

Erwin hummed. “As Defense Secretary, Pixis' first and only priority is to the United States. As long as our interests coincide, he can be reasoned with. But unless Intermipol becomes an active threat against the country, we can't expect much more than well wishes and dinner parties.”

Pixis was a careful man. A spat between the Survey Corps and Intermipol wouldn't concern him so long as his people were safe on their own soil. The Panacea incursion complicated that. A meeting with him was their first order of business.

Levi stood and brushed himself off.

“What was his name?” Levi asked.

“Hm?”

“Your mole. The one I just handed a black eye.”

“Eld Jinn. Why?”

Levi shrugged. “Owe him a drink.”

They moved on. Erwin recalled another cache just off a main road, one which, if untampered with, should have a motorcycle. The dappled sunlight was almost too much for Erwin, too precious, too real, after eight days of gray sterility. Of all things, he thought of that meager spider plant in his apartment that had shamelessly been without water for so long. In the same breath, his body hummed with Levi's physicality, prickled at his wolf-like prowl. He stalked well before him, then to his side and to his rear and back again, no angle left unchecked. No spot blinded.

Erwin wondered if Levi's wrists still stung as he gripped his handgun – they had one apiece – or as he signaled Erwin to stop or move forward, stung because he saw visions so terrible that he condemned himself to shackles at the mere possibility that he might see them manifested with his waking eyes.

They crested a hill. At its peak, Levi pulled him to a stop. “You sound like a like a broken car.”

Erwin tried to steady his breathing. “I'll be alrigh-”

“How much farther?”

Erwin thought back to the landmarks they passed. “Just past...the third finger lake. Two….” he breathed, “three hours...at most.”

“Sit.”

“Levi.”

“Sit. That, or you wait here while I run ahead and bring the bike back.”

Erwin considered it. “No. Splitting up isn't wise.”

Levi threw off his jacket and wordlessly pillowed Erwin's head as he lay down. Every gesture burned, every little touch.

Levi patrolled as Erwin rested. His shallow breathing drowned every other sound.

When they set off again, Erwin told him. He told Levi what he, or, as Erwin suspected, his double, said to him in the boiler room when they, for lack of a more elegant way to put it,switched bodies.

Levi said nothing for a time. Erwin couldn't read his expression.

“'Kronos doesn't belong here'?” Levi echoed.

“First Mike hears this name. Now you-”

“I never heard that name,” Levi snapped. “Not in the dreams. Not anywhere else, not until Mike said he did. And – shit...” he dragged his hands through his hair. “Switching bodies…” He shook his head. “It's bullshit. I was delusional-”

“You've seen me nearly switch more than once.”

“Switch?” Levi scoffed. “Those were hallucinations.”

“I'm starting to think,” Erwin said, “they were not.”

They crossed a dirt path. “They're not real. None of it's real-”

“We've tried ignoring it. We've tried minimizing it, fighting through it as if it were just another titan, just another minor nuisance. I believe,” Erwin said, “it's well past time to suspect Intermipol's hand in this.”

“What, are they beaming bullshit into our brains via satellite? Shoved chips up our asses when we weren't looking?”

“We need to look at every possibility. Levi.”

Levi canted his head toward him, but he didn't look him in the eye. Erwin lay a hand on his shoulder and drew him to a stop.

“You need to tell me if you've ever heard this name before. Ever, in your visions?”

Levi stared ahead distantly as if to run through the reel of his memory.

“No,” he said. He broke away and went on. Erwin didn't move.

“Are you sincerely skeptical that these dreams mean more than we know, or are you afraid?”

“We need to get moving.”

“I'm eaten nearly every night.”

Levi slowed. He didn't turn. “Don't.”

“I've seen myself split in two or three. I've seen everyone I know, everyone I love, thrown around like dolls-”

“Don't,” Levi seethed. He moved faster, and Erwin followed.

“But that life isn't mine. That Erwin isn't me. Whatever you see, whatever is done to this other Levi, it might be real, however loose that word might be now,” Erwin called as branches snapped at him in his rush to match Levi's pace, “but it isn't you.”

Levi stopped again and turned.

“He has my name,” Levi whispered, as if he were to raise his voice any more, it would be a scream. “He has my face,” he said as if he would like nothing more than to rip it off. “He talks like me. He, he's-”

“-not you,” Erwin finished.

“But he could be. And I could be him. Come on, mister 'all possibilities',” he sneered. “What if he's more me than I am? What does _me_ even mean now? What does...shit.”

Levi had never spoken like this. If this was Intermipol's doing, then their efforts were being met with great success. Erwin couldn't imagine what concocted scenes could bend the most iron-faced man in the Corps.

He knew, too, now, that Levi's visions were nothing like his own. Erwin's dreams were horrific. Every wall past a certain height froze his blood. Every titan growth projection stole his breath. But no wall troubled the tenets of his identity. No titan could rob his soul.

“Strange,” Erwin said as they moved on.

“What?”

“No one chooses that name by accident.”

And because Levi knew only the crumbs of the legend, Erwin offered the main course. He recounted the first infant surges of pro-titan sentiment four decades prior, when early titans – so named because even then, they shot up inches, then feet, above their peers – were thought only to be errant mutations. Accidents. No one minded the refugee boy who lived despite an internal body temperature three times what it should have been. No one bothered the old janitor with skin like wrought iron. Some were studied. Some were paraded on morning talk shows. Many were kidnapped.

The first pro-titan radicals plucked them from the streets. They worshiped them. They dissected them. They emulated, or tried to, the discarded wretches they swore to be the humble blossomings of the next great era in human evolution.

The court of law tolerated them. The court of public opinion humored them. Before their grislier practices became known, they were a media darling cult. A sideshow. A topic of conversation prefaced by an argument about a football game and followed by a comment about the weather.

The change was sudden only to those who ignored the signs. Governments were loathe to spare the manpower needed to track and investigate one lonely fringe group's surging numbers and progressively hysterical sermons in a day when one couldn't toss a dime that wouldn't roll in the direction of a civil or national war.

One gray, Sunday morning, the de facto leader of the pro-titan radical movement declared over a much-advertised public stream that after years of searching, of prodding and hacking and bloodletting, he had at last found what hardened the titans' skin and what boiled their blood. He knew, he said as he dined on meats and salads, as he raised a glass of wine to his followers, what had given them these seeds of immortality. And as he cleared his red-stained plate and dabbed the corner of his mouth with a silk cloth, he declared that to grasp immortality as their beloved titans had done, one must only consume their infant child.

The international manhunt lasted a day. The man was shot on sight, and the nest was kicked.The rapidly militarizing horde split and burrowed into every corner of the world. To this day, they obeyed their scripture.

“Mike can tell,” Erwin said, “how many of their young they eat. They never stop at one.”

They named him Kronos after a story that wasn't theirs to borrow in an era that that wasn't theirs to ruin. Ever since, copycats try and fail to make themselves a throne out of a buzzing swarm.

The original Kronos was dead, though many regret he was made a martyr. A cannibal's prophet.

“But to invoke his name,” Erwin said, “is to send a message.”

They rest again when the quality of his breathing fails to pass Levi's judgment. As they looked over the third finger lake, leather streaked across Levi's body. The straps appeared in a blink, the jacket in two. Levi coaxed him out of the vision before Erwin himself realized what had happened, though he spoke too quickly for Erwin to understand anything but a few words, but a name.

“Koschei?” He asked, but Levi waved it off. Some folktale, he said. First that came to mind.

The second supply cache was guarded by Intermipol agents, now five, all armed. For hours, the two tracked their movements, but their patrols never took them far from the seemingly inconspicuous cabin that held what they needed.

Erwin sighed. “We could always walk.”

“Five hours,” Levi said. “Five hours going 70 from here to the city. That's if the main roads aren't being watched, and I'd bet Nile's left nut they are. Let me take them. You know I can-”

“No. Intermipol won't have any more ammunition against us. We can spin our disappearance from The Ring, but not if we're caught antagonizing their agents.”

“What about our spy? When they hear what they report-”

“-they won't be believed, because Mister Jinn has been cultivating a drunkard's facade for months. There's another cache-”

“Wanna bet that one's fucked, too? It's too late for politics, Erwin.”

Erwin turned to him. “Nothing matters but the film. We'll walk from here to Chile if it will ensure its survival.”

Levi held his eye. His chest rose like that of a man who had an argument or two yet in him.

But all that came was a gruff “Right.”

They agreed to watch the patrolling unit until nightfall. With any luck, the changing shift may grant them an opening to sneak inside. Radio chatter crept through the trees as they waited. Levi scoffed.

“They hide like they're trying to catch someone and they don't shut off their shitty radio-” He trailed off. Erwin turned away from their vantage point over the cabin. Levi was staring at his right arm.

“Levi-”

“It's nothing,” Levi said, but Erwin knew it was far from nothing. He knew he'd looked like that not an hour ago.

“Все в поря-?” _Is everything-?_

“That doesn't work for me,” Levi said. He stared at Erwin's arm as if to take his eyes away would turn him to stone.

“What works, then?”

“I don't know,” Levi snapped. Hysteria began to curdle his voice.

 _“_ Think, Levi,” Erwin said. He didn't dare approach him, not now. “What would sound out of place in your visions? What would be a contradiction?”

“I don't know,” Levi murmured. He took a step back. “I can't be near you.”

“Will that wo-”

“You don't get it,” he said. Sweat beaded his brow. He threw his handgun to the ground. Several knives from increasingly improbable locations on his body joined it as he stepped away. Every snapped twig may as well have been a gunshot in Erwin's ears. He stood to follow – they couldn't shout to one another within meters of the agents.

Levi broke into a run.

Erwin gave chase. He gritted his teeth to keep from shouting after him. Trees melted together in his rush. He kept pace until the dull ache in his chest became an inferno. He fell to his knees. His lungs screamed.

There were hands on him. Erwin blinked the encroaching black from his vision.

“-shouldn't have-”

Levi forced him on his back and held him down by his shoulders.

“-fucking-”

Erwin grabbed his wrists.

“-run-”

Levi tried to wriggle out of his grip. Erwin squeezed. He squeezed like he meant to slip into his skin. His breathing steadied. It steadied instantly.

Levi noticed. “You tricked me.”

“You can't run from it, Levi,” Erwin said. “A contradiction-”

“There is none.” His eyes locked on Erwin's arm again as he writhed, but his desire to slip out was complicated by his fear of doing any more damage to Erwin's battered ribs. “They've started...started branching off or something, there's too much to-”

“Think, Levi,” but even as Erwin said it, it came to him, what the other Levi had done when he crossed over. He had cut him.

In one motion, Erwin released one hand, slipped a switchblade from his trouser pocket, flipped it open, and carved a shallow line into his own arm. Levi's struggle ended in an instant. He fell to his knees as Erwin sat up.

“How did you-”

Gunfire erupted from the direction of the cabin. Levi hauled Erwin to his feet, but as they braced to flee, a resounding groan rippled through the brush. Birds burst out of every tree. Small animals of every sort clambered away. The earth shook with each titanic footfall.

“Of all the fucking times-” Levi started. He braced to run, but Erwin didn't move.

“Come,” he said, and moved toward the roar. A bullet stripped the bark off a tree not a meter away. Levi bristled.

“Now's the time to spill that you have a helidisc or two up your ass, old man,” Levi yelled over the pops and the roars and the too-human shrieks.

“Every cache of this size has a steel cellar.”

It was their best chance. Intermipol knew what it was doing to set up a guard around every supply cache within walking distance, maybe even within the entire state.

Erwin didn't dare think what would have happened had Levi not run and moved them far from the carnage. One side of the cabin ran red. The agents fired blindly. Intermipol's own foot soldiers were not taught where to strike and how.

The titan was a nine-footer, maybe more. It ripped into the belly of one man as another pair struck its flanks with their flimsy, Intermipol-issue retractable blades. They rounded the cabin until it stood between themselves and the gnawing beast. They waited for it to turn away. Levi wiped at his brow.

It turned. As the agent screamed, Erwin rushed to the front door to initiate the retina scan. Levi plucked one of the men's blades from his cooling hands. The scan was complete. The system poured through the database for a match. The last Intermipol agent fell silent.

The only sound was the distant hiss of titan flesh. Erwin braced a hand on the doorknob as Levi bent low to edge the blade behind a corner and keep an eye on the beast. The scan matched. Erwin turned the knob.

It was jammed.

“Erwin...” Levi whispered.

Erwin opened his mouth.

“Shut up,” Levi snapped. From the corner of his eye, Erwin saw that Levi did not even turn his head his way to speak. He didn't move at all.

“Don't move,” Levi mouthed.

Something slick and wet landed on his shoulder. The cabin roof groaned. Erwin didn't look up. He didn't have to. His grey coat bloomed red.

The titan gurgled lazily. Erwin looked up, a millimeter at a time. Gunshot wounds peppered its eyes. It had been blinded.

Levi edged toward a rock. The titan turned, though Levi had made no sound. Levi froze. It sniffed the air with its bloodied, flaring nostrils. The roof groaned as it clambered closer to him. As it turned, Erwin caught a curious shapenear its heel, too geometric for something that might have been left behind after a pass through the dirt. The way the light glanced at it, it almost looked like a tattoo.

Levi glared at himfor lack of any other mode of communication before Erwin met his eye and caught the stone thrown his way. He flung it as far as his arm could swing.

The beast didn't even look toward the sound. Its sockets were reappearing.

Erwin caught Levi's eye and signed to him to split up on his signal. Levi's eyes widened. He knew it meant only one would live.

Levi had disobeyed his orders in Pennsylvania. He refused them in Trinidad's Port of Spain. He hadn't known, then. He'd been the leader of his merry bands of misfits, but the reason for his disobedience wasn't asneat as a mere disregard for authority. His defections had not been planned, and Erwin suspected that he regretted them after the fact, regretted every one when he saw what might have been had he bitten his tongue clean through in fury but followed Erwin's orders all the same.

All his life, Levi fought for survival. The day was won when he returned with as many men and women as he had left with that morning, regardless of whether or not they returned with what they'd sought.

Levi had rounded back to kill the titan that reached for a child in San Antonio. He didn't make it to the one that leveled her school. He broke formation in Barcelona to steer a pair of titans away from a packed church. The team failed to protect the Mayor's property, and the Barcelona branch was shut down.

But he knew, now. He nodded now, even as Erwin was sure he was biting his tongue clean through.

Erwin raised one hand and counted down. The titan whined and thrashed on the roof with its knobby fingers rubbing at sloppily reappearing eyes.

They ran. Erwin raced toward a grove of densely set trees he wagered would slow the lumbering thing. He may even trap it in the thicket.

He might have, had the titan not closed its teeth on his foot. He knew the sensation. After the first time, there was no forgetting it.

Erwin fell so sharply that it robbed him of all the air in his lungs. With his free foot, he twisted, groaned as the motion pulled its teeth deeper, and struck its jaw, and again, and third time until it whined from its slackened mouth.

He ignored the siren wail from every atom of his being to stay clear of its mouth to instead grab the largest fallen branch from the ground and lodge it behind its descending teeth. He grabbed another and batted away its clawing hands as he moved in again to slash its eyes into a runny pulp with the switchblade still wet with his own blood.

The titan thrashed. Erwin crawled away as blood pooled in his boot. As he searched desperately for another branch to use for a crutch, the creature fumbled in his direction.

There was movement behind it. When Erwin saw it for what it was, for a moment, it wasn't adrenaline-laced panic that welled in him but something like disappointment. Levi was coming back. For a moment, but only a moment, he wondered if he should have just thrown himself into the titan's jaws if it would have removed the reason forhis return. The titan rose to its feet and shrieked as the branch pierced through the bottom of its mouth.

The titan exploded.

There was no other way Erwin could have described it. For an infinitesimal speck of time, its head ballooned before it burst and rained itself across two dozen meters of forest. Skin and bone and human remains were expelled so forcefully that they bruised where they hit. It was the second time in as many weeks that Erwin was showered crown to toes in titan blood.

Nothing stirred in the ensuing silence but his pounding heart. Levi stood in the middle of the clearing. No single inch of him was unbloodied. It oozed off the ends of his hair.

Erwin laughed. He laughed because when the adrenaline wore off, he wouldn't be able to anymore. He laughed because despite just barely escaping the fate of a main course, the sight of that ballooning face strained his abused ribs more than the trials of the entire day.

Levi walked over and stood over him, mouth slightly agape and seemingly incapable of speech.

Erwin smiled at him unabashedly. “I didn't know you could do that.”

Levi's face wrinkled past what he thought possible for a human face. Erwin laughed again. As Levi crouched to inspect his foot, Erwin grabbed him by his jacket lapel. He wasn't laughing anymore.

“You came back.”

“I had a clear shot.”

“You disobeyed.”

“It was a niner. Am I supposed to tell the Corps that I came back alone because a shitting  _niner_ -”

Erwin pulled him closer. “Yes. If it was an eight-foot, a seven-foot, yes. If my death warrant was signed by a two-foot-”

“Let me go so I can see your foot.”

Levi stopped the bleeding and threw Erwin's arm over his shoulders. As they passed the hissing chunks, a glint of metal caught his eye.

“Wait,” Erwin said. “Walk over there.”

“Intermipol's on our ass,” Levi hissed.

Erwin recalled the strange shape on the titan's foot, a shape like a tattoo. He insisted.

As Levi threw himself at the jammed door, Erwin bent to scrape the scalding flesh away with his switchblade from what looked like impossibly thin wires. He picked away at the device as the flesh burned through his gloves. Delicate, fibrous tendrils slipped out of collapsing veins.

Levi brought down the door and stepped inside.

Erwin had slain dozens, if not hundreds of titans. He had seen thousands more undone in more ways than he could name. He had never, not in his years as a recruit and not in their most recent incursion nor ever in between seen anything like this.

He considered the tattoo, and wondered if that and this piece weren't part of a tracking device. But he and Hange had attempted to track titans to potential nests years before. Surgically placed devices were either melted into scrap or expelled from the flesh. External trackers tied to extremities or limbs were torn or bitten off. Either way, this wasn't like anything he and Hange had ever designed. The filaments were light enough to be picked up by the lightest gale, yet strong enough to survive an internal blast. They were woven in such a way around muscle and bone that the only reason Erwin could pry them away at all was because the flesh melted away.

He looked around for other pieces but he may as well look without eyes when he couldn't pick himself up and look closer. His breathing picked up as the adrenaline faded. Pain rushed into him in waves, each one stronger than the one before.

The welcome rumble of a motorcycle drew him out of his thoughts. He pocketed the device and looked up as Levi handed him a towel. It was no substitute for a long shower, but Erwin was more at ease knowing parts of men and beast weren't plastered to his coat. Only half of the blood that soaked them hissed away.

The wires weighed heavily in his coat as they rode on dirt paths and side roads. He played the inexplicable blast in his mind again and again and again. 

It had long since grown dark. Levi tensed each time Erwin's grip shifted on his waist. Erwin tried not to think about why each time he had asked Levi to think of a contradiction, his eyes had shot between his neck and his lips.

 


	13. Of A Feather

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [Puscifer - Polar Bear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHZonzHWjQc&feature=youtu.be)

 

They needed to put just another mile or two between themselves and the carnage. The bike was an older model. Slow. It was just another minute. Erwin's hands tightened on his waist. Loud, broken breaths puffed against Levi's nape. It was just another minute.

Cruelly, he was thankful for Erwin's pained grasps at his middle. The feeling of his flesh and blood arm around him warded off the insistent metallic glints just beyond the edge of his vision that stirred his blood, shimmers he couldn't see when he looked for them, glares that were all he would see when he didn't.

He pulled over. They rode some meters more into the brush until it concealed them from the road. Levi hopped off before the engine had even rumbled its last and dove into their rucksack for the aid kit. He handed it to Erwin and stalked off to keep watch.

It was dark. There had been no time to find night vision goggles in the shack. There was never enough time.

Every so often, a tremor raced through his arms. They were running blind. They'd had no significant contact with anyone for more than a week, and they didn't dare try now. They'd be tapped and triangulated in seconds.

Occupation. The word conjured images of military conquest, of leering jackbooted swarms. Nanaba had been flown to Munich for questioning, leaving Mike and Hange the only senior officers left to mend the splitting seams of the Survey Corps. Maybe they had been flown out, too. They didn't even know if the occupation was public knowledge. They had no idea of the extent of it.

They knew one thing, and one thing only. Every last mote of evidence collected from the Panacea incursion was compromised.

He returned when he could bear the wait no longer and knocked Erwin's hands away. He exhaled sharply as Levi finished the stitching on the largest wound. He started on another. Erwin's hand closed on his wrist.

“Later,” he said, and shut the smaller wounds with rows of butterfly bandages. They wouldn't hold for long, but Levi held his tongue. Even in the dark, pain painted a pallor in his skin, and still through the too-familiar dance of needles and tightening flesh, he had made no sound louder than a sigh.

Levi pulled him up when the bandaging was done and handed him one of Intermipol's retractable blades in lieu of a cane. Erwin froze.

“You kept this,” he said. Too exhausted to argue, Levi decided to bring the bike to Erwin instead. Erwin didn't move.

“If they find this on us-”

“You can't be serious,” Levi said. This was ridiculous. They had to move. “It doesn't matter. They know we were there, they'll see shit's missing from the cache.”

“They won't care about the cache,” Erwin said as if he were explaining to a child, as he rubbed their prints from the handle and began to dig. “But they'll pin the death of that entire squad on us if they see this.”

“Erwin,” he called, but Erwin wouldn't hear him. His bloodstained hands churned the earth as if he knew no injury at all, tilled it as if burying that blade would bury the exploded titan, The Ring, even Panacea, bury every wretched thing that ever happened in the world. He filled the hole, patted it flat and dragged twigs and leave across it. The blood sank like rubies into the earth. His eyes were hollow. He was in too much pain.

Levi rummaged through the bag. Erwin frowned at the capsule dwarfed in even Levi's hand as he rose shakily.

“I need to be alert,” Erwin said.

“You need to not collapse on me.”

Erwin looked at him fully then, indignant. The look was wrong on him. It was unremarkable enough on anyone else, but on Erwin, it was almost petty.

“You think I'm weak,” Erwin said.

“I think you're an idiot. Take it.”

Erwin opened his mouth to speak before another wave of pain knotted his brows and halted his words. When it passed, he opened his eyes, and all Levi saw then was exhaustion.

“I'm sorry, Levi,” he murmured. “I'm being difficult.”

“Shut up.”

Erwin took the painkiller and Levi threw his arm around himself to carry him to the bike. On the way, Erwin quickly described their route to a Survey Corps-fronted restaurantnear the city where they would operate from until they plotted their next step.

They froze when they heard a voice. Then they heard it again. And again.

The wild calls for help could have carried to the ends of the earth. Levi hurriedly carried him the rest of the way, but they were too late.The first shards of a flashlight began to illuminate the brush. Levi braced one hand against the pistol in his jacket pocket and stood between Erwin and the source of the echoing howls.

He willed his eyes to remain open despite the sudden glare of a flashlight.

“Oh, thank fuck,” the newcomer said, and doubled over to breathe. Levi was unimpressed. With the flashlight out of his eyes, he saw a woman looking like she'd gotten lost on her way to a gig fronted by a band with a name like Pastel Avian Punk. Feathers of every shape and color had been woven through ratty pink fishnet tights. Birds of every kind were stitched into her jacket.

“Oh my god,” she started as she straightened and brushed a twig from her shorts. “This is the tits. This is tit fuckin' central. Ingrid breaks down in the middle of fuckin' nowhere and I was about to – oh...please tell me one of you fellas knows howta fix a gal's bike. Please. God, please.”

“No,” Levi said as Erwin said “Yes.”

The woman clenches her fist, says, “Angels. Both of you, fuckin' angels. Lemme bring her around, won't take a minute,” and bounds back from where she came.

“Good call,” Levi admitted, not having considered at all that agreeing would send her away long enough for them to leave.

“Wait, Levi.”

Levi hopped onto the bike and started the engine. “What-”

Erwin wrapped his hand over Levi's and turned it off. “Wait.”

Levi turned around. “You're not serious.”

“Wait for her,” he said, and nothing else.

“What the hell for? Is she an agent?”

“No.”

“Do you know her?”

“No.”

“Erwin-”

“Wait for her,” he said.

Levi's every bone protested. Surely Erwin knew how easily Intermipol could pay a shill to be their eyes and ears. That woman could be reporting to Intermipol that very second. He said as much to Erwin, who repeated his order and nothing more.

Branches snapped and twisted as she dragged her bike towards them. As she launched into a description of the accident as if she was being paid by the word, Levi understood that he was the one who would need to come forward. It meant leaving Erwin's side.

“You,” he said at her, nodded toward her bike, and waited for her to move away from Erwin before he joined her. He watched both of them in between checking the engine, but no matter how many questions he lobbed at her to keep her eye on himself, she was too eager to turn back to Erwin, who had tucked his injured leg out of sight and taken to shining a flashlight on the bike to illuminate Levi's work.

“-but then she said to him,” she rambled in her smoker's drawl, “'Jimmy', she says, she says, 'Jimmy, I don't give a shit about your mortgage, you wanted that puce bike and you wanted my money and now, now I want something too', so I'm out of my mind laughing, Maggie's on her third tissue box-”

Erwin tsked. “It must be so hard on her with her operation-”

“I know!” she said as Levi marveled at how Erwin could keep up at all. He almost wanted to linger by the bike to spite Erwin if he hadn't suspected that he enjoyed her company now that it seemed the pain had at last left his face. Levi decided to cut the pleasantries short.

“Lady,” he said, and she turned to him. “You're outta luck. Chain's warped.”

“Shit,” she said.

“Yeah. Tough shit,” he said, stood, and dusted himself off, “Find a tall tree and camp out til morning or something-”

“Hold on, birdie.”

“What?” But she was already slipping off her rucksack and lifting her jacket to unwind her belt. Levi hadn't paid attention to it in the low light, but when she held it out, he saw it to be a spare chain.

“Last time I listen to Jimmy,” she scoffed, and turned to Erwin, “He said it looked tacky. Almost didn't wear it, can you imagine?”

“Stylish and practical. Very nice,” Erwin said.

Levi could have gagged. He snatched the chain and almost turned away from Erwin entirely to blot out the smile he gave her. Undeserved, he thought savagely, then wondered why he'd care about a thing like that at all.

“Your jacket, too,” Erwin continued to Levi's infinite displeasure. He yanked the busted chain out of the gears.

“Made it myself,” she winked. She turned her back to Erwin and he hummed approvingly.

“Such a vibrant red. A crane, right?”

“Close! Can you believe Mags called it a pelican?”

Levi pinched his fingers in the gears as Erwin laughed. He finished installing the chain as quickly as he could while keeping all ten fingers. As the woman showed off the patches on her jacket sleeves, she turned her back to Levi.

“Nah, she said to Erwin, “It's an egret. Wanted to be a jackdaw, cute lil' thing, but the name was taken.”

It was the largest patch, stretching from collar to hem, the stitching sloppy on the red egret.

His breath caught. He'd imagined it. He'd imagined all of it. If he only blinked, the patch would be something else. A vulture. A rat. It would be green. It would be blue. It would be anything in the world, anything but what he'd just heard, what he'd just seen.

The woman followed Erwin's eye. “Hey, birdie,” she said, “All done?”

It was a coincidence. It couldn't not be a coincidence. It just so happened that a few words, a few perfectly common English words happened to follow one another on two separate, unconnected occasions.

Because a dream was all it was. All it would ever be. There was the usual dreamlike inconsistencies, the usual bizarre blather about aligning sides, about finding some red bird, and if he'd dreamed a moment longer, he could as well have looked down and found himself center stage in a banana suit in the middle of a performance by the Bolshoi ballet.

“I'm-”

_Tell her you're the jackdaw._

“-done. All done,” he said. What he'd thought to be bluster was calculated intent. What he had taken for mindless gossip was a crafted narrative. He stared at her as if the answers to all his questions would spill from her eyes. For a moment, and only a moment, he could have sworn she knew.

But just as quickly, the bluster returned. “Thank you boys so so much,” she said. “I'd smooch you both silly but I gotta swing.” She took a seat on the bike and before Levi could say another word, she was gone.

The grass smelled. Levi never noticed it before. The insects that must have all hushed to eavesdrop on their chance meeting resumed their millions-strong night orchestra in a singular swell.

“Levi.”

Metal glinted in his periphery. He couldn't look again. He couldn't run again. His face burned with the memory, the shame of it. He hadn't known what else to do. He couldn't have predicted whether the temptation to end the man's life would come in a trickle or a simple switch and he'd refused to stay and find out.

But Erwin was injured. Erwin needed him. He couldn't run again. He could never run again.

There was a pressure on his arm. Levi flinched, but it remained, solid and real. He turned and realized that the muted rustling in the grass had been Erwin using the bike for a crutch.

Wordlessly, Erwin brought Levi's hand to his right arm, to his wrist. The metal warped and melted now, uncertain of itself. Levi's fingertips troubled the blonde hairs on his forearm, then gripped him more surely. He rucked up his jacket sleeve and followed the blue rivers beneath his skin and watched it bunch and depress when his hands pressed and kneaded until the glare was gone.

But with his new-found sobriety came another uncomfortable truth.

“You knew what to do,” Levi said, “Again.” And though he was sure he'd spoken so low that he'd have to repeat it, Erwin nodded. Levi didn't need to finish his thought.

“We can discuss it when we're off the streets,” Erwin said, and Levi thought the wording was a bit too stiff, a bit too clinical. A case to be closed. A problem to be solved. So be it.

Erwin's eye stopped on something in the grass. He hummed thoughtfully. Levi turned.

She left her bag.

“Levi-” Erwin started, but he had already knelt by the bright green rucksack. Levi turned it over and shook it. A single manila folder tumbled out. For all the convincing patches and buttons on the outside, not another object fell out of the bag. Every pocket and zipper was empty. No faded receipts. Not one grimy penny.

“Come here,” Erwin said urgently. He took the envelope, skimmed over the pages inside, slipped it into his jacket and demanded they leave immediately.

It was past three in the morning when they reached the restaurant-fronted safehouse overlooking Manhattan Island from a Hoboken pier. After coming in alone to inspect the place for any signs of Intermipol surveillance – Erwin assured him that the location of this safe house was not recorded anywhere Intermipol may have accessed, but now wasn't the time to be too careful – Levi helped Erwin through a back door and left him with an on-site medic to finish treating his foot.

He readied a room upstairs for Erwin to rest. He wished it wasn't so quiet. He wished he could stop thinking.

Erwin had lied to him. He didn't know why she had bothered with the song and dance about her busted bike. She could have just given him the envelope. There was no one else around to see. She didn't even need to show her face.

The door opened and Levi stopped pacing. Erwin's cane knocked dully against the wooden floors.

Erwin sat on one of the two beds and examined it sheepishly. “I haven't needed one of these in a while.”

Levi locked the door.

“We good to talk here?” Levi asked, though he'd already checked this room and every adjacent one for bugs and moved anything that might even accidentally act as a transmitter to the first floor.

“Yes,” Erwin said. He hobbled over to draw the blinds over the windows and removed his jacket. He placed the envelope on a small, peeling writing desk and took a seat.

“Who was she?” Levi asked.

Erwin stretched out his injured leg and tapped on the folder.

“I've had contact with anti-titan groups and private militias for years,” he said. “Many, understandably, operate under false names in false locations. Many change them twice a day. Even if that woman had told me her name or even the name of her organization, I wouldn't have recognized either without the records I need to made sense of it. But whoever she is, whoever she works for,” he said, took out a single page, and offered it to Levi, “she knew that, too.”

The page was indecipherable. Numbers both printed and handwritten smothered every bit of white space on the page on both sides.

“Every fourth sequence of digits begins with a two,” Erwin said. “Every other third sequence ends with a four. And the last line on each page ends with three sequences that each add up to fifty-one. This encryption is for one type of information only.” He met Levi's eye. “They're broadcast security codes.”

Levi's grip tightened on the page. “That means-”

“The film can launch tomorrow.”

Levi's heart drummed in his ears. “If everyone's still in position.”

“Yes,” Erwin hummed. “This occupation is a problem. The film is secure, but should even one of our agents on standby be exposed prematurely, entire networks of our personnel would be compromised.” He rubbed his eyes. “Our agents downstairs have informed me that Intermipol is regarding it as an occupation only internally. To the rest of the world, it's an 'investigation'.”

“They're minimizing it? So they're scared and we still have the public.”

“Yes. But not for much longer. This so-called investigation began yesterday around the time we were scheduled to leave The Ring. Publicly scheduled to leave The Ring.”

Levi scoffed. “Are they stupid?”

“Yes, I'm told that choice was too transparent for even the pro-Intermipol pundits to ignore. That timing might have been a gift from our Iaso agent. I can't imagine how she could have convinced them to do this.”

“She still undercover?”

“Yes. Deep. Playing the double agent in Munich since the upset at Iaso Industries, giving them useless or outdated Corps intel to buy their trust. Her getting caught has turned into the best thing that could have happened to the Corps. You've never met her, have you?”

“No.”

Erwin smiled. “She's fond of you. She knew of you before you joined us, admired your work against Intermipol so fiercely it was almost cruel to keep sending her in deeper without meeting you. But she understood what had to be done. Ms. Ral is one of our best.”

Levi slipped the page back into the envelope. He sat on a windowsill and pressed the back of his head against the cold frame. He watched the river roil between the blinds.

“So you didn't know who that woman was.”

Erwin watched him. “No, Levi. I've never seen her before,” he said, and he sounded so infuriatingly sincere that Levi nearly regretted asking.

“Do you?” Erwin asked.

Levi frowned. “No,” he snapped, knowing he was about as convincing as he was tall. He didn't know her. It was the truth. It was conditional and imperfect, but it was the truth.

“But you recognized her.”

Erwin's voice grated now, too soft, too smooth, as if he understood, as if he wanted to understand.

“Don't use the codes,” Levi said.

The temperature in the room fell. Erwin shifted his injured foot. “Why?”

“You don't think it's awful convenient how she found us in the middle of nowhere? You really don't think it's just a little weird how we happened on the one piece of intel we needed, the only thing standing between us and launching the film?”

“She may have followed us. Our allies are no more friendly with Intermipol than we are. She must have waited until we had put enough distance between us and their nearest outpost, must have tracked us all the way from The Ring.”

“You're kidding,” Levi said through gritted teeth. He could swear Erwin was being obstinate on purpose.

“The encryption is solid.”

“Codes can be stolen.”

“We can contact our allies and confirm it's validity.”

“They could be compromised, too.”

“Levi-”

“You think Intermipol doesn't know they exist? You don't think it could buy them off?”

“Our allies are principled-”

Levi laughed cruelly. “Intermipol is working with radicals, Erwin. You know, the ones that eat babies? Their own brats? You think Intermipol is above shoving mothers and fathers in front of firing squads and asking your friends to choose between them and their shitting principles?”

“They wouldn't.”

“Then I must have imagined,” Levi seethed, “that every Silvers merc I commanded was short a mother or sister or son. And these weren't activists, Erwin, they weren’t even dissidents. They only wanted bread on their fucking tables.”

Erwin didn't respond immediately. He looked at Levi's hands, and only then did Levi notice he'd begun to tremble with the worst kind of cold rage. The kind that poisoned. The kind that didn't trickleaway.

Finally, Erwin said, “We won't be cowed by paranoia,” and Levi could barely understand what he'd said over his tone, collected and cool as if any of this could be solved with enough reason, as if their rivals knew reason at all.

“No. What we won't do is take the easy way out,” Levi said, and stood.

Erwin's brows met. His face was pale again. “Easy. I'd hardly call organizing dozens of international resistance groups, each with their own demands and agendas and petty internal squabbles, easy.”

The street lights were slitted by the window blinds. Strips of light draped over Erwin as he gripped the thigh of his bad leg. “I've never known you to prefer caution over opportunity. We can't abandon years of preparation for a hunch.”

“Never stopped you before,” Levi said. “All those security measures abroad. I stepped all over Mike and you never said a thing. You and him, all you big city dogs are too fucking polite. You think you can get rid of Intermipol with good manners, you think they'll play ball til the very end like the Silvers thought they'd play ball until they and everyone they ever knew weresix feet under.”

“We're not the Silvers.”

“We will be if we make their mistakes.”

Erwin's grip on his thigh tightened, but he didn't look away. “Did you recognize that woman?”

Levi was uninterested in talking anymore. He hadn't slept since tapping yes's and no's with his finger to the delight of a man who looked just like Erwin or was Erwin or was nothing like him at all.

“I already told you – whatever. I need to piss.”

He recoiled from the restroom's peeling walls. The faucet was too loud, the click of the knob too sharp. He lingered in the hallway. He returned to their door, but he didn't stop.

The window at the end of the hall opened out onto an empty lot. He'd nearly forgotten what it was like to scale a building. He reached the roof and found the least grimy place to sit and watch the boats chugging over the Hudson.

He could tell Erwin about the dream now, tell him all of it. He could tell him he knew what the inside of his skull looked like. He could tell him he knew what his blood felt like gushing between his fingers.

He could tell him after the film lands. Then he'll board a plane and begin scouting operations as far away from New York as possible. And if Erwin declares him too dangerous for the Corps to harbor, he'll find another anti-titan militia and he'll do the very same there. He'll be fighting the same fight. It won't be any different. He just won't see Erwin again, never again.

He won't see thehorror on his face, the disappointment. The revulsion, even, when he divulges the less-than-professional elements of his dreams. He'd embarrassed himself enough in The Ring thinking Erwin could have possibly been in his right mind when he touched him. He'd embarrassed himself when he'd touched him back as if there was room for sentiment in the lives of men like them.

He'd hated Erwin for it, for that quality Levi couldn't name in any language he knew but one that drew all around him into his orbit, hated it because he thought it so transparent and so baldly sincere that he would have no trouble avoiding it, no trouble at all resisting the pull of the sun.

But orbit, he did, and for no other reason than Erwin had cared. He cared to use a global Survey, a campaign so demanding that nearly all top Corps officers, including its commander, preside over its execution, to train Levi, to make a street rat turned merc turned syndicate captain into something more than the blood under his nails and the money in his pocket. Levi was not second in command, not even third – those distinctions fell to Nanaba and Mike, respectively. He came to occupya liminal space at Erwin's side that had no name, that had every name. He shivered and drew his knees closer to his chest.

Keep your enemies close. That's how it goes. But Levi can't convince himself of that. Not entirely. Not anymore.

The door to the roof opened behind him. The cane knocked sharply against the paved rooftop. He didn't look up when Erwin sat beside him, didn't say a word to whatever joke he made about canes and growing old. His growling stomach betrayed him.

Erwin pushed a container of what smelled like lamb soup into his hands and opened his own. Fronting as a restaurant had its perks. Levi was too tired to pretend he wasn't hungry after nearly a full day without a meal that wasn't a protein bar or a stick of dried meat.

Erwin asked that he listen, only listen, so Levi listened.

The pier lights set the ends of Erwin's hair aflame as he described what he suspected was the underlying structure of their dreams. Levi was thrown. He'd assumed he was about to hear a lecture about the importance of divulging essential intel or whatever Erwin was prepared to say to convince Levi to explain how he knew that woman, but it seemed he opted for a more circuitous route. Levi blew on his spoon and resolved to listen to every fifth word and no more, but that too, did not go according to plan.

“Connected,” Levi repeated after Erwin had been talking for some time.

“Yes,” Erwin said, eyes flashing nakedly in the hope that Levi truly understood.

“Like chapters in a book or something?”

“Yes,” Erwin repeated still more emphatically. “Scenes in an act, acts in a play. Not every one, no, not even close. There must be twenty, maybe forty filler dreams in between-”

“Filler. Like some shitty tv show.”

“Right. Fragmented and undecipherable and too disturbing to even think about. They-”

“You get a lot of those? Really bad ones?” Levi asked. He wasn't sure why he asked. He didn't know what he wanted to hear.

Erwin didn't speak for a moment. A gale flirted with his hair and blew it into his eyes. “I do,” he said, and tucked the strands away.

“Yeah,” was all Levi could say, but he imagined Erwin understood.

“Many of these disconnected dreams end in death. Mine. Someone else's. Everyone's. So many that I'm afraid I've become numb to every manner of violence that can be done to a human being.”

Levi swallowed loudly.

“But the ones that stand out, there's a pattern to them. They're richer. Meaningful.”

“Real.”

“Yes. If these filler dreams were finger paintings, then the connected ones, these sparse few that pop up once a month or once every two, they're Last Suppers and Adele Bloch-Bauers. They're referential. They speak and sing to one another. Sometimes, they come out of order but that only means there is an order. There's meaning.”

Levi thought of Manitoba. The withdrawal fever. The titanium arm. The rigid chill of it against his, the assassin’s, lips.

“Once a month,” Levi murmured.

“Every week, now,” Erwin said. “They're becoming more frequent. For me, anyway.”

Levi didn't answer. He chewed slowly, recalling the memories of all the dreams he'd suppressed in the past month alone just to be able to get out of bed. Most followed the same old formula. Receive orders. Hunt. Shoot. Be shot. But now that he revisited that corner of his mind with something like intent, on something like an order, he uncovered then-unremarkable little scenes that now seemed like something more.

In one, he haggled with a rosy-faced woman in a dim office. In another, he'd lined up a shot he didn't take. In still another, broken-glass moonlight scattered over his trembling thighs.

In some, the mark had his arm. In others, it was lost to an imitation in titanium and wire. In only one, it was neither. In only one, Levi had learned the reason for its absence, but only just. Hange's gushing ballads about titan physiology were unexpectedly welcome now, because he thought it awful coincidental that the mark had tested some sort of cure that had withered every last meandering river of blood in his arm when the titans Levi knew in his waking hours were only titans in part because of hyperactive red blood cell production and immune responses several hundred times more efficient than the average human's. If the dreams were anything but dreams, Levi would be sorely tempted to divulge this detail.

Erwin was watching him. He was watching carefully. “And for you,” he said. “You've noticed it too.” It wasn't a question.

Levi set the container aside. He felt Erwin's eyes on him, but he didn't meet them. If the dreams were anything but dreams, he might even think he'd witnessed the beginning of the titans' end in that blackened arm. If they were anything else, keeping such a detail to himself was something like betrayal.

Erwin shifted his leg. His toes curled in the black brace. “I don't want to order you.I don't want to threaten or cajole or manipulate it out of you.”

“So don't.”

“I will say one thing. You changed my mind downstairs.”

Levi finally looked at him. Erwin's jaw worked. His brows were drawn over his eyes, the blue hidden by the beginnings of a focused squint into something only Erwin could see.

“I didn't want to believe it. Pride, I think. But you're right. What happened to the Silvers, I can't assume the Corps is too big or too clever to share their end.”

“Shame.”

“Mm?”

Levi shrugged. “I wanted more of a fight.”

Erwin smiled. “No, not from me. Not about this. I didn't want to believe it, but the last time we underestimated these visions, these dreams, I nearly lost a head.”

This was new. “What are you saying?”

“I knew Mike was dreaming. I knew they weren't the usual nightmares. He smelled the Halcion on you in Manitoba. He wouldn't sleep during the global survey. If only I was more open-minded, if I wasn't so absorbed with my own, I could have encouraged him to talk me through his, could have-”

“So what? What would that have done?”

“Mike's sense of smell has grown astronomically since these dreams started. He had it suppressed with cigarettes.”

“Yeah, but what does that-” But the reality of it dropped like a stone in his gut, and Levi forgot to breathe.

Erwin nodded. “If he hadn't, he could have been able to sniff out Beckert and Foley weeks, maybe months earlier.”

“Shit.” Levi dropped his head in his hands. “ _Shit_.”

“Now you understand,” Erwin said, “why I'm inclined to not make the same mistake.”

They could have found Foley sooner. They could have thrown him in a cell. They could have gotten a confession. They would never have had to stay in The Ring, to have to give Intermipol an entire week to clean house and destroy evidence that might have finally substantively connected them to pro-titan radicals. Erwin had briefed him on the evidence the Iaso agent uncovered about Iaso, Intermipol's top donor, having ties with radicals, but even that was a tenuous, rotting link that could as easily be turned around on the Survey Corps if they had nothing more to support their accusation that the world's largest and most powerful policing force was secretively recruiting an international cult of titan-worshipping cannibals.

He flinched as a large, warm hand fell on his shoulder. Erwin didn't draw away. Levi wondered why he felt grateful that the man never stopped reaching for him, why his body rejected out of habit what his mind began to crave.

“Don't,” Erwin said knowingly. “Don't overthink. Otherwise, I'd be out of a job.”

Levi laughed, he couldn't stop it. Even that was imperfect, a dry, quiet little huff. The hand moved to his back, just below his nape, and out of the corner of his eye, Levi caught Erwin's answering smile.

Levi could barely believe that the events of the last twenty four hours had actually happened in that short a time. His wrists still bore shackle-marks. Erwin still breathed too quickly, his sides still blue and green and everything in between. But he wasn't tired. He chanced a guess that Erwin wasn't either. Not anymore.

So he swallowed his heart and asked Erwin if the names Sina, Rose, and Maria meant anything to him, and Erwin looked at him like he was seeing him for the first time. Walls, he explained, in his own dreams, they were walls that went on for miles, walls that trapped the horizon. Hange too, Erwin suspected, knew these names, had written them down and referred to them as domes, but he knew no more than that and no more about whether Mike knew them.

“Weird,” Levi said.

“Mike is very private. I'm not surprised-”

“Not that. Walls. Domes. They were people in mine.”

Erwin's jaw fell. Levi was almost proud of that. Erwin stared fixedly ahead, focusing on a single point the way he does when he's thinking furiously.

“People. I had looked into people but not nearly as...I made cursory inquiries into individuals who might have had these names but having only walls or domes to reference, I was sure their counterparts in our reality would be structures. I focused my search on buildings, locations, landmarks-”

Levi frowned. “'Our' reality? You mean, _reality_?”

“Of course,” he said distantly. “But this, just this, is more progress in our understanding of these dreams in months.”

The message was clear. Keep talking. Levi could barely hear himself over the rush of his blood in his ears. He told Erwin there was a city. He told him there was an epidemic. He told him there was a cure. He gave him scraps, and Erwin knew, and Erwin wanted more.

“Some people might have been…gunning for you,” Levi said carefully, “for that cure-”

To his horror, Erwin laughed. “I'd be shocked if they weren't, he said, and nausea curdled in Levi's gut. At Erwin's tentative questions, he realized, too, that he hadn't seen Hange or Mike or anyone else he recognized. Only Erwin.

“Strange,” Erwin said to that. “I've seen everyone there is to see. Soldiers. Friends. You. People I haven't seen in years. My father...” But he said no more, so Levi didn't press.

“There's a...” He trailed off again.

“A what?”

“I didn't want to bring it up, it seemed…but in the interest of-”

“Today, Erwin.”

“In the boiler room, there was a moment-”

Levi froze.

“-a moment where I was sure it wasn't you I was talking to. The other Levi-”

“There's gotta be a better way to talk about them.”

Erwin hummed in agreement. “Any preferences?”

Jackdaw came into Levi's mind, but it didn't fit. Nothing about the assassin was birdlike. Nothing about him was human, either.

“Dragunov,” Levi said. “That's what you call him.”

“Is that his name-”

“Yeah. It's my name for him.”

He'd seen more of the assassin's weapon than the man himself. The rifle that had taken Erwin's head so often that Levi could not tell too early in the morning whether Erwin was alive or dead was not of exactly the same make, but Levi wasn't interested in manufacturer specs.

“Alright,” Erwin said, and if he recognized the name and wondered about the connection, he didn't say. “When Dragunov spoke to me in the boiler room-”

“You told me already.”

“Yes, but that wasn't all of it. Before he said a word, he cut me.”

Levi's chest tightened. “What?”

“Barely. With his – your – nail. And he looked…relieved to see the redness on my arm, or the blood-”

The arm. Dragunov had wanted to be sure which Erwin he was speaking to. Levi might have thought he was keeping a secret or two from the mark, if Levi had any illusions about these being actual people.

Something else came to Levi then.

“That's how you knew,” Levi said. “When I ran. You knew what to do.”

“I guessed. I don't know the why or the how. You don't need to tell me that, not now,” he said, as if it were a cursory, unimportant detail. Levi hadn't mentioned how the mark had tested the cure, only that he had it. He'd made no mention of a metal arm. Not yet, Levi promised himself. Soon, but not yet.

“But what I hadn't told you in the woods,” Erwin went on, “I thought it was unimportant, but...”

“What?”

“There's a scar on your hip. Normally, it wouldn't matter, but he touched it. With my hand, he took it and traced it through your shirt. He said, 'He doesn't belong here' and when I asked who, he only said 'Kronos'. The scar-”

“What are you saying?” Levi breathed. All the blood rushed from his fingers and toes because it sounded an awful lot like their friend Dragunov had accused Levi of being Kronos. For a single, weightless moment, Levi wondered if he was. If dreams weren't really dreams, if titans were viruses in one world and beasts in another, if he killed the man in front of him nearly every night for the past six months, there was no reason reality as they knew it had to stop breaking down there.

Erwin's brows knotted in concern. “I only…I understand if it's too personal, but, is there a chance that scar has anything to do with any of this?”

Levi breathed out. It came out in a pathetic shudder. “No,” he said. “I doesn't.”

That should have been the end of it. Erwin didn't need to hear any more. Levi didn't understand then, why he suddenly wanted to volunteer it.

“Car crash. Ten-ish years ago.”

The sky was lightening. “Nizhny Novgorod,” Levi said. “Some drunk slams into my side. Knocked out for a week,” he said, and that really should have been that.

“Woke up, and…couldn't remember shit. Little things, you know? Could've sworn Farlan smoked. Pack a day. He comes to visit, says he's never had one in his life. Isabel never used to bounce her leg. Can't stop her, now. Says she's always done it and I don't know why she'd lie about that, either. Couldn't even remember the president. That's the first thing they ask, you know? President and year. And I didn't know. Almost knew the year. Off by a month or two.” He rubbed his neck. “This is stupid.”

He rose, and Erwin's hand fell from his back. He hadn't realized how long it had remained until the cold air whipped the lingering warmth away. “We should probably get some sleep one of these days.”

Erwin didn't speak. He'd all but frozen in thought.

“Hey,” Levi said, but Erwin didn't hear him. Levi raised a hand meant for his shoulder. He lost his nerve. Words like _coward_ and _weak_ commemorated that little failure.

He knelt by him instead.

“Erwin.”

Erwin turned to him, slowly. He looked at him as if for the first time in years. “Levi.”

“Yeah. Wanna get some shut-eye sometime this year?”

Erwin's mouth parted as if he had something of some enormity to say. Sirens wailed across the river. “Sure,” he said instead.

Levi helped him up. He sank into a chair as Erwin took a shower down the hall. The blisters on his wrist were just beginning to heal. He wasn't looking forward to splitting them open again. When Erwin returned, Levi stood to leave.

“Wait.”

Erwin sat at the end of one bed.

“I felt it, too,” Erwin said.

Levi stopped. The cane clattered as Erwin set it aside. “Felt what?”

“The sensation of waking up in a world that just isn't right. Feeling like you're losing it, like you're alone in the world.” Levi turned. “When it started for me, I was eight. My father had just been entered into Intermipol's reintegration center.”

Levi shut the door and locked it. Erwin took pains to avoid mentioning his family. This was the second time within the hour.

“They almost had Hange, too. If Moblit hadn't contacted the Corps when he did – but that's another matter entirely. Normally, once a person completes the program, they're released. They stop saying silly things like _titans exist_ , or _Intermipol is too powerful_. Intermipol is happy. Everyone is happy.”

Erwin rubbed his right hand. “My father wasn't happy. And neither was Intermipol. They couldn't break him. So when he was entered into the reintegration center for the third time, he didn't return.”

Levi knew of these centers. More than a few Silvers had seen the inside of them. More than a few of their family had never gotten out. Many families of current and slain Survey Corps soldiers were placed under protection on the Corps' dime in the event that Intermipol decided it was not enough to “reintegrate” those who had seen and slain titans, but their families, too.

“They sent no letter,” Erwin said. “They responded to none of ours. We weren't millionaires. We didn't have senators or generals in the family. Our outrage meant nothing. Those weeks were like a dream,” Erwin said, and looked up. “Trauma changes people, but it doesn't change the names of cities or governors. My bed suddenly had a headboard when I was so sure it was a cot. Parks and streets were nowhere where they used to be. Even the air was different.”

“It smelled different,” Levi said.

Erwin looked at him as if he'd just found something, someone, he'd been searching for, for years. “It did.”

“Do you think they slipped you in one of those centers?”

“If they did, I would have remembered. The people and children they institute, they remember. The names of their handlers, the color of the wallpaper. No. But something did change. A million little somethings.”

He looked vulnerable then, casting his eyes up and down, and Levi knew what he wanted to say. “I never...this is the first time-”

“Me too,” Levi said quickly. “Not Farlan, not Isabel. Didn't want them worrying.”

Erwin's brows rose. Levi didn't know why that would be much of a surprise. “It's probably nothing,” Levi said. “Intermipol's fucked with so many heads that this shit is status quo. People expect to be reprogrammed now. It's like a dentist's appointment.”

“It should never have gotten this far.”

“How are we on Pixis?”

“I contacted him when we arrived. He arranged our escort for our return to HQ and assures me his protection supersedes Intermipol's warrants.”

“But…?”

“He insists I meet him tomorrow.”

“In DC?”

“No. Here. And that, more than anything else, makes me think he knows things are about to change.”

“How soon?”

“If Intermipol only declared this occupation today, they wouldn't have had the time to seriously undermine our security systems. And if,” and here he looked meaningfully at Levi. “we use the red egret's broadcast codes, the film, the campaign, years of secrecy, decades of preparation…. we'll see it live on every screen in the world this time tomorrow.”

Erwin took out the fibers they'd found on the exploded titan from his jacket pocket. “And when the dust settles, we can finally get back to what really matters.” The fibers curled over his knuckles.

“That's why I need to know,” Erwin said as he stood and approached Levi. He blocked out the rising sun. “What do you know about the red egret?”

 


	14. Everybody Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erwin meets with Pixis. Levi has a secret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [Deus Ex: Everybody Lies](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBU-5kXIqHo)

Erwin willed himself to sleep. Levi knocked on his door when their escort arrived. Erwin didn't ask him how he slept, where he'd slept.

They crossed the river without incident. An unmarked car waited for them on the opposite shore. Men and women swathed in riot gear stamped with the shimmering white Intermipol insignia on their arms, chests and backs crowded every street corner, every shop. One might be forgiven for thinking New York City was under martial law. Erwin made idle conversation with their driver as Levi shared the backseat with a Defense Department representative. Levi, who assured Erwin he knew nothing of the red egret. Levi, who looked like all his blood had frozen the moment she'd said her name.

The three entered the lobby of the tower housing the Corps' main offices. A woman with a sharp gait and a sharper eye approached them as they entered. A pistol waited at her hip. Armed guards circled them.

“Captain Riza,” she said by way of introduction. “If you'll follow me-”

“That won't be necessary,” Erwin said.

Pixis' representative, a mile-a-minute schmoozer with a Washington smile, stepped in to confirm that the State Department elected to give temporary political asylum to the commander and to Levi. The Intermipol captain demanded every shred of documentation to confirm the fact, but she was otherwise calm. No petty sneer, no barking orders. Even the squadron surrounding them did not so much as move.This was no simple investigation. Intermipol was sending their best. It was sending a conquering force.

While their sovereignty was being debated, Erwin looked around. The once-bustling lobby was nearly silent. They had taken so many. It had only been a week.

Two brisk phone calls later and they were cleared. Their weapons were confiscated. The captain updated their troops' standing orders as the squad surrounding them returned to their posts.

They split. Levi dove into the personnel records offices to get an estimate on how many of their soldiers were stolen from them. Erwin rose to his own office to finally receive the Panacea report.

Erwin counted five pea-sized bugs hidden poorly along the walls and ceiling within three steps. The Intermipol agents who left the room when he arrived were doing him an empty courtesy. They didn't need bodies in the room with him to know what he was doing. He eyed the report sitting innocently on his desk and flipped through it for show, as if he didn't know that Intermipol had combed through every word and doctored every detail they preferred him not to know. Mike knew those details. He needed to find Mike.

The door swung open. Levi stood in the doorway, face ashen.

“We need to go,” Levi said. Erwin didn't need to ask where.

The sky roiled as they drove to the warehouse district. Pixis' representative, Charlie, chattered enough for the three of them. Erwin watched Levi's leaden eyes through the rearview.

Levi tore out of the elevator as Erwin instructed Pixis' man to wait by the doors. Intermipol guards flanked every two meters of tunnel. Erwin followed Levi's shadow into the empty atrium. Sweaters and jackets were still draped over chairs. A handful of the hundreds of monitors still flickered. Erwin passed long-cold mugs of tea and coffee as Levi flew to the door of Farlan's office. It opened.

“Levi-” Farlan started.

Levi grabbed Farlan by the collar and slammed him into a wall. Erwin broke into a run, mindless of the lance of pain in his still-healing foot at every step.

“-one thing-” Erwin heard Levi say as he approached. “-you promised me one thing-”

Erwin dismissed a couple of encroaching Intermipol guards before turning to Levi. “Stand down.”

“Nothing to say, huh,” Levi seethed at Farlan, fists curled into his shirt collar, blind and deaf to Erwin's order. Farlan hung limp in his grip, an admission of guilt.

“I won't repeat myself,” Erwin said, and Levi let Farlan go.

Intermipol had flown Isabel to Munich. She and Jones, the only two living helidisk fliers on record aside from Levi, were called in for questioning concerning the unregulated devices and their role in the Panacea incursion. Them and, at a glance, ninety percent of active duty Survey Corps personnel.

Farlan curled into his desk chair and hung his head as Erwin shut the door behind them.

“Can we talk?” Erwin asked, his meaning clear.

“Yes,” Farlan said. “I removed everything inside when I heard you were coming. Room's not, uh…it's not soundproof, of course-”

“You expecting someone to raise their voice?” Levi asked.

Erwin resisted the urge to stand between the two. “Enough. Farlan followed orders. My orders. Protesting her warrant would have been tantamount to putting a target on her back.” Levi glared at him a moment longer before turning away.

To Farlan, Erwin asked, “Where's Mike?”

Farlan wrung his hands. “Gone.”

“Arrested?”

“No,” Farlan said. “Just gone.”

“Abducted,” Levi said.

“No, it wouldn't make sense,” Erwin said. “Not when they could've issued a warrant – they certainly did for everyone else. They wouldn't court a scandal like that.”

Farlan looked away. His dark glasses were gone. Erwin had seen the telltale shimmer in his pupils even so.

“Headaches?” Erwin asked.

Farlan's brows shot up. “No – I mean, it's been busy with Mike missing and acting chief Rodriguez arrested-”

“I meant your implants.”

Farlan blinked. “Oh.” He laughed nervously. “No, um. Not a lot. Still a lot to process, but-”

Levi looked from one to the other. “What?”

Farlan didn't look at Levi.

Levi stepped forward. “What did you do?”

“Don't – don't be nervous.”

“Who said I-”

“You're at 120.”

“I'm what?”

“Your heart. Um...I can see that now. Not see-see, like, not visible light. But stuff like infrared and uh…well, you remember Geordi from- I guess it doesn't matter. But I can get around easier now, I can help.”

Levi didn't speak. Erwin didn't remember ever seeing him slack-jawed.

“I didn't…I didn't want to be useless. That...that other surgery, it'd take too long, so I-”

“Didn't tell me.”

Farlan frowned. “You were a little busy. In hiding.”

“We can return to this later,” Erwin said. “Where is Hange?”

“As far as Intermipol knows,” Farlan said, turning from a stricken Levi, “they're on vacation halfway across the world. But they've been hopping from lab to lab hiding whatever they can and destroying the rest. News travels fast, I bet they already know you're here. They told me they'll come to you first, too risky the other way around.”

“Good,” Erwin said. “And Moblit?”

“With Hange.”

“Squad leaders?”

“Nearly all arrested. Still held somewhere in the city, but anyone who complains too much gets shipped off.”

Levi scowled. “They're bleeding us.”

“More like skinning,” Farlan said. “Our deep cover agents are nearly all intact. The ones I know about, anyway.”

“R&D's Nifa Ward?”

“In hiding.”

“In the city?”

“Yes.”

Levi turned to Erwin. “Why Nifa?”

“Farlan,” Erwin said, “I don't need to tell you that the chain of command is growing short.”

Farlan swallowed. “No, sir.”

“Nifa will be our communications director, our first.”

“But doesn't Intermipol usually-” Farlan stopped. “Oh.”

“She will also have details concerning the new chain of command,” Erwin said. “I'm asking you to to prepare for a Survey Corps without myself. Without Mike, or Hange or Nanaba. And in the absolute worst scenario, without Levi.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This may be the last order you receive from me. When I step down-”

“Sir?”

“When I step down as commander – and it may be days or weeks, or it may be tonight – you are to follow the instruction of your superiors only.”

“I understand, sir.”

Erwin glanced once at the closed door. Lowly, he added, “When I step down, you are to peacefully resist any effort by Intermipol to influence your duties or those of your superiors and instruct your subordinates to do the same. If Intermipol says walk, you stand. If they say quiet, you scream. If they say talk, you-”

“Lie,” Farlan finished. He nodded haltingly. He swallowed thickly again and asked, “It's happening, isn't it?”

Farlan was observant. He may have suspected for months why Corps soldiers had been covering their faces, why cameras were fixed to bikes and why more Survey Corps personnel operated undercover than on the front lines than at any other time in its history.

“Yes,” Erwin said.

Erwin left Levi with Farlan and headed for Mike's office. He only asked that Levi lend him his knife.

According to Farlan, the unedited report on the Panacea incursion was known only to Mike and Hange, but even in the dark, Farlan was able to put some things together himself. No one was yet implicated in the assassination of the Survey Corps squad near a subway entrance at the tail end of the grating operation. Beckert was still in Survey custody, but barely so. As a member of the Survey Corps, she was under Survey jurisdiction. But as an enemy combatant and a traitor, she was Intermipol's property. Their hold on her relied on testifying in favor of a pro-titan radical. It turned his stomach.

The room was unlocked. Erwin knew searching it was useless the moment he stepped inside. It was clean to a fault. Intermipol men had confiscated everything of value before vacuuming the carpet and dusting the shelves. Even so, they couldn't take everything. They wouldn't know where to look.

Erwin removed the carpeting near the far right wall and lifted a square meter layer of faux floor panel. Erwin jimmied loose an uneven floorboard and flipped it over. Carved into the board were coordinates:

N40°43'12.9873"W74°0'50.3109"

Erwin memorized them and smiled into the pea-sized camera watching him from the nearby shelf as he carved into the message with Levi's knife until nothing remained but splintered scratches.

“One hour, commander,” Charlie informed Erwin as he and Levi returned to the elevator. Erwin chanced a glance at him that Levi didn't return. There was a resignation in the sway of Levi's limbs, in the cant of his head. Yet there also was something like resolution, too, in the rigidity of his spine. He didn't stand as close to Erwin as before.

“Just off Battery Park, guys,” Charlie said, checking his watch as the elevator ascended.

“Good,” Erwin said. They only had one stop before then.

The coordinates led them to Pier 25. Charlie waited in the car.

Tourists and regulars crowded the parks and courts on the busy pier. Erwin strolled the length of it, jostled here and there by the crowd until there was no more pier. He looked out into the Hudson with his hands clasped behind him. Levi turned to scan the revelers at his back.

“He tell you he planned to hide?” Levi asked.

Erwin watched the waters roil. He recalled the dark rings under Mike's eyes when he told him he was planning to resign. “Yes and no.”

Levi didn't say anything more. After several minutes passed like this, Erwin moved again. He sat on a bench in the busiest area of the pier, opposite a volleyball court. Levi watched him go. He joined him after another five minutes had passed.

“Not like him to do this song and dance shit,” Levi said.

Erwin hummed in agreement. A more chilling thought was that Mike had been caught, but Erwin sequestered that to the back of his mind. If they must wait the full hour for Mike or his contact to appear, they will.

And for a full hour, they waited. They waited until they couldn't anymore. Erwin looked out at the pier one last time as if the person they'd been waiting for would emerge that very moment, just like in the movies. But this was no movie, and the door-lock clicked mutely as they sped toward Battery Park. Levi muttered to him in Russian all the way, broken folktales hot in his ear. Twice, the walls had shimmered in the river, reflected by the waters. Levi's hand slipped into his coat sleeve and squeezed his right arm as he told him again about Koschei the Deathless.

A boat waited for them. Plainsclothes secret police read newspapers on benches and skipped stones across the bubbling waters. Erwin doubted a single person in the park wasn't wearing a sidearm.

Erwin crossed the ramp onto the swaying boat. He felt movement behind him.

“I'm sorry, sir,” Charlie said to Levi, whom he was bodily preventing from boarding. “The commander only.”

Levi met his eye. Erwin shook his head. Charlie, seeing that Levi wasn't making another move, waltzed past Erwin. Erwin pulled him to a stop with a hand on his shoulder.

“Surely it wouldn't be too much trouble,” Erwin said, “if you kept Levi company until I return to shore.”

“But sir, it's perfectly-”

“I insist. I trust you a great deal more than a park full of plainsclothes officers who forget to hide the protrusions of their side holsters.”

“Oh,” Charlie frowned. His ears reddened with something like indignation as he squinted at the offending officers. “I'm awful sorry for that, sir, but-”

Erwin leaned down to say in his ear, “It would be a personal favor to me. And there are worst ways to be in these coming days than in the good graces of the Survey Corps.”

His eyes widened a fraction. The man chattered like it gave him eternal youth, but he wasn't stupid. Pixis doesn't hire stupid men. He um'd and ah'd for a moment for drama's sake, and Erwin let him. Levi, not having heard a thing, could only glance between them. Erwin winked over his head, and Levi turned away, scandalized.

As Erwin expected, the man acquiesced. Erwin returned Levi's knife before boarding, slipping it from under his sleeve and into Levi's and disguising the shift with a handshake. Levi didn't look him in the eye, but Erwin's hand trailed out of his reluctantly loosened grip even so. He was a dot on the shore in just moments. Soon, Erwin couldn't see him at all.

After a customary pat-down, Erwin descended into the interior of the boat. He felt Pixis' hand slapping him on the back before he had even seen his face.

“Good man, right on time,” Pixis said, and ushered him to his seat. Erwin moved as his eyes adjusted to the dim room from the sunlight on the surface. When they did, he stopped where he stood.

Pixis poured him a glass of something or other. “I'm afraid we'll need to dispense with the pleasantries-”

“Keith,” Erwin said, not trusting his voice beyond that. The man in question stood and offered his hand, and by rote, Erwin offered his own. He was older. He hadn't a hair left on his head. It seemed to have all migrated to his chin. Keith and Pixis took their seats as Erwin glanced between the two of them.

“I do apologize for not informing you of our guest earlier, Erwin,” Pixis said, “But it seems we're all slaves to time these days.” Pixis leaned back in his chair and cocked his head, the picture of comfort, of ease. Shadis leaned forward and clutched at his knees until his trousers bunched and wrinkled.

Erwin finally took his seat, but he hadn't taken his eyes off Shadis. “I haven't seen you in five years.”

“And I've seen your mug and heard your name on every channel and every station every day for the last week,” Shadis said. His voice was a marriage of engine sputter and crunching glass. Lowly, he added, “Don't get sloppy on us, Smith. You promised.”

“I promised you a future worthy of your sacrifice,” Erwin said cooly. “And whether or not you believe me now, you will see that future.”

“Future's a long time, kid,” Shadis said.

And for Shadis, it was. For Shadis, who had been forced into hiding after deliberately giving heinous orders for the purpose of allowing Erwin an opening to publicly call for a court martial and subsequently assume the rank of commander after Shadis' resulting flight, to give the Survey Corps one final shot at clawing at independence just before Intermipol officially bestowed upon itself the authority to name any one of its shills to the rank of commander, five years of living a ghost's life was a long time.

“Now, gentlemen,” Pixis chided amiably. “But to the point, Erwin, we have been seeing an awful lot of you ever since the incident at Panacea's corporate offices. Nothing of which, I might add, is very kind to you.”

“I imagine it isn't.”

“Now, and do forgive me,” Pixis said, “But in the interest of putting to rest a number of nasty rumors being circulated-”

“By all means,” Erwin said.

“The Survey Corps was already at Panacea tower before the incursion. Why was this?”

“We responded to reports of a rogue EMP set off in that same tower. We found it unusual that no federal agents were investigating the incident, that no one was in the tower at all when the blast occurred.”

“So,” Shadis said, “You had your guys install those things, those, uh, sensors. To find titans.”

“Yes.”

Shadis frowned. “Didn't know titans could set off EMPs.”

“Titans can't. Radicals can. And the two are never far apart. The absence of any people in the tower when we arrived was very similar to many other incursion sites we've come across. Many times, there are signs of struggle, but just as often, it's as if every man, woman and child in a town simply disappeared. I can provide both Survey and Intermipol reports confirming this.”

“You shot Nick Foley,” Pixis announced.

Erwin's brows shot up. “Sir?”

Shadis sniffed. “Well?”

“No sir,” Erwin said. “As it was, Nick Foley shot me.” Erwin gestured to his right ear.

The two men shared a glance Erwin couldn't begin to decipher.

“Yet Foley is dead,” Pixis said.

“One of my men returned fire.”

“Did you authorize this action?” Pixis asked.

“I suppose I retroactively condone it,” Erwin said. “Might I remind you that both shots must have occurred within the same second, if not half-second.”

“Yes, this Levi of yours is a fine shot. Did you also authorize Levi's public punishment of Elise Beckert?”

“Yes.”

The two exchanged another look.

“You understand, Erwin,” Pixis began diplomatically, “the way that incident played out, it-”

Shadis interrupted. “You're all made out like a pack o' dogs. Some shitty cellphone camera vid of that's been playing nonstop on the evening news.”

“And I take it,” Erwin said, “everyone has conveniently forgotten what this woman is?”

It had been a gamble. If Beckert had simply been taken away as if she were one of their own, the Corps would have been accused of being soft on radicals. The alternative was no less sickening, and yet, Erwin couldn't bring himself to regret his decision.

Pixis leaned forward. “And what is she, Erwin?”

Erwin's brows fell. He hoped, prayed, that this would not be the first Pixis had heard of this. “A radical, Secretary Pixis. A pro-titan radical of the baby-eating variety.”

Pixis chortled. “Is there any other variety-”

Shadis interrupted. “World ain't getting none of that, son. Pundits made it out like that’s how you discipline one of your own.”

Erwin set his jaw. The very idea churned his blood. He tasted ash in his mouth. “In that case – and I didn't imagine it was possible – Intermipol is more conniving and more cruel than even I imagined.”

“You believe Intermipol is influencing news coverage?” Pixis asked.

Erwin resisted the impulse to scoff, to shake his head in disbelief. “It's not a matter of belief, Secretary. It's a fact.”

“Very good, very good,” Pixis said to himself.

The questioning went on for hours. Erwin knew it was to his benefit, and yet all his blood protested at so many clearly misguided questions with such clearly obvious answers. But he was patient because he had to be. He was kind because he wanted to be. And Erwin elaborated on each and every fine point because he alone was the voice of hundreds, thousands of lives both lived and lost whose own voices were robbed and stolen and silenced for more years than he could stomach.

Pixis refilled his glass. “This was an illuminating meeting, Erwin. Thank you.”

“No, Secretary, thank you for giving the Survey Corps this opportunity to correct the record,” Erwin said. “And you, Shadis, thank you. I can't imagine the risk of coming out here.”

Pixis beamed. Shadis frowned weakly and waved him off.

“This, of course, makes what I need to say that much more unfortunate,” Pixis began, and Erwin's chest tightened. The boat rocked softly. Sunlight pierced through the drawn curtains in jagged shards.

“I'm afraid, Erwin,” Pixis said, “this Panacea incident has placed your organization's agreement with the United States concerning the placement of its headquarters in great peril. There are many, and I mean _many_ , in the House, and many more in the Senate, who believe this blight on our city would have never occurred if-”

“You don't know that,” Erwin said uselessly, even as he knew in his thundering heart it didn't matter, even as he countered his own words in his head the second they left his mouth, “No one can know that-”

“I'm truly sorry, Erwin. But you, of all people, should know this. People rarely act on what is right, but what feels right. And right now, to a great many people, shutting down your headquarters in this city is what feels right. Banning your organization from the city, the state, even from the country, feels right.”

Erwin nodded. “I understand, Secretary.”

“Now,” Pixis said with an exaggerated frown, “it's only been a week, eight-ish days since the incident. The first, poorly-drafted reactionary bills against your organization have been struck down, but I wouldn't wait until the real ones reach the floor. I estimate you have less than a week of wiggle room, commander.”

Shadis snorted and turned to Pixis. “Less than a week to do what?”

“I couldn't possibly say,” Pixis said, and smiled warmly at them as the broadcast codes in Erwin's coat burned into his chest.

Erwin stepped outside as they returned to the shore. Shadis, understandably, remained below, and Pixis stayed with him for company, though knowing, too, that Erwin would want to process their meeting alone. Erwin gripped the flaking white banisters as salty spray lashed at his face and coat.

His body buckled under the specter of the future, of this heady, once-faraway thing that he incubated and nurtured for years now breathing down his neck. He fired off a text to Levi to make sure he was alright. Levi answered in the affirmative in Russian, and though Erwin had miraculously lasted the entire meeting through without so much as a single warble in his periphery, he smiled at the gesture.

Levi, who killed for him, who bled for him and lied for him. Levi, who lied to him.

Levi, who had poisoned the codes, their salvation, with his doubts. Levi, who was now all that stood between the world and the Survey Corps' revolution, who stood between Erwin and the launch of the film.

The moving boat kicked up a chilling wind. Erwin thrust his hands into his coat. He felt around his right pocket. Something was in there that hadn't been there before.

Erwin stole a glance at the onboard Secret Service, bur they were far more interested in examining the approaching shore and surrounding waters. Erwin withdrew what felt like a velvet pouch. It was so small that it could fit unnoticeably into his closed fist. He teased the drawstring open and upended it. Three rings fell into his hand.

At a glance, he'd estimate them to be titanium, and a fine quality alloy at that. He recalled all the people he'd bumped into that day, all the people he'd passed. The pouch was so light that he must have been wholly oblivious to it for hours, and Mike's messenger so nimble that even Levi, hawk-eyed Levi, did not catch them.

Fading sunlight caught on the inner lip of the pouch. Erwin peeled the inside layer away and held it up to the light until the sun charred the hidden words for him to read.

 _New IDs. Yours. Hange's. Levi's. Mine with me._ _Nan has hers._ _Operational only when worn. Wrong finger=gone finger so careful. Beckert/Foley NOT RADICALS. MUCH WORSE. Will update when able. DO NOT LOSE BECKERT._

Erwin folded the note and withdrew a lighter. Ashes met the churning waters.

He missed the days when the notes Mike passed him were ones that mercilessly teased their grade school teachers or even the ones that had masterful caricatures of their classmates. Mike always had a knack for it. He could have been an artist.

Worse than radicals. Much worse than radicals. Unless they were a combination of every wretched sort of human and beast that had ever walked the earth and ever will, Erwin couldn't begin to imagine how anyone could possibly be one iota worse than a child-eating titan worshiper. On any other day, the absurdity of it would have challenged him, dared him to imagine the possibilities, on any other day.

He fingered the rings in his other hand. He knew which ring belonged to which hand with only touch.

His ring prompted him for his name in a tinny voice when he slipped it on his middle finger and stroked the rim. Mike hadn't agreed with that method of activation when the two had been kicking around ideas – it's a dead giveaway if stealth is a priority – but once the interface flickered onto the back of his hand, Erwin found that it could be disabled and replaced with a stroke and tap pattern lock if the user so wished.

Erwin was sure Mike's ring's geolocator was disabled but he tried anyway. He tried four times. It couldn't have been clearer. Mike didn't want to be found.

He examined the remaining two as he shifted his weight off his injured foot. Hange's was a dark, earthy green. It was thicker than the other two, and heavier. With how little space it took to store information nowadays, Erwin imagined the data in Hange's ring could have once filled a hundred palaces. Levi's was identical to his own, only smaller. Erwin wondered if Hange's was the odd one out, or if his and Levi's were alone identical.

The sun had set before the boat reached the shore. Levi waved him over from the street across the park, a bike at his side. Charlie stood nearby, tremors snaking through him and his hair in a perfect mess.

“Took our man for a ride,” Levi said innocently. Charlie gave Erwin a thumbs up as if he didn't trust himself, or his gut, if he opened his mouth to speak.

Erwin shook his hand. “I keep my promises,” he reminded him.

Charlie attempted to comb some semblance of order into his hair with his other hand and nodded. “Of course, sir.”

“I may not be able to personally return the favor in the coming weeks, but I'll make it known that you are welcome anywhere Corps personnel are welcome.”

Charlie stopped fidgeting with his hair. “That's…that's very generous of you, sir. Not to shoot myself in the foot, but your man here is more than capable,” he said of Levi.

“I don't doubt it for a second. Even so, you know the power of your office. Your presence is a shield with no physical equal.”

“Of course. Oh, now this makes this difficult-”

“I know,” Erwin said wistfully. “The Secretary informed me our asylum is coming to an end.”

“Not so! Twenty-four hours, no fewer,” Charlie said. “But yes, in terms of that shield stuff… I'm afraid I can't stay. But good look to the two of you.” Charlie looked as if he wanted to say more, but he held his tongue. All the trees in the park shimmered and swayed in a passing gale.

Charlie bit his lip and covered something on the inside of his jacket lapel with his fist. Levi stepped closer as Charlie glanced around him and leaned in to say, “Washington owes you its ass for that Firefly installation of yours – haven't seen one of them titans ever since your boys and gals canvassed the city. Problem is, out of sight, out of mind, and the suits up there got memories like goldfish.” He clicked his tongue. “Now, I'm not gonna tell you boys how to do your jobs, but if you want the States on your six when you're duking it out with you-know-who, might help to give the bigwigs down there a lil' scare to remind 'em why they feel safe again letting little Johnnie and Susie walk to school without an armed detail.”

Levi's eyes widened as Charlie removed his hand from the wire on his lapel. “Course, last time my cousin Bonny came up here,” he said too-loudly, “Broadway damn near shut down to keep her off the leading men, but what are you gonna do?”

“Some things are inevitable,” Erwin agreed.

Charlie winked at them and made his way down to the boat. Levi turned to Erwin as it took off.

“Did he just tell us to sabotage Washington? D.C.? The capitol?”

“Pixis really hires the best, doesn't he.”

“Erwin. You're thinking about it.”

Erwin moved Levi and himself off the street and over to a secluded bench. He bit back a groan as he sat and took the weight off his foot. The cast was robust and subtle and allowed him to move around with only the barest limp, but it could only take so much punishment.

“I am, and I have before. But I can't justify pulling a stunt like that without an army of Corps soldiers stationed there to mitigate the damage.”

“You mean soak up civilian deaths with our own,” Levi scowled.

“Last resort. I won't even speak of it now,” Erwin said. “We have more pressing things to discuss.”

Erwin relayed the meeting as succinctly as he was able. They shouldn't stay in one place for too long, especially now that the plainsclothes secret service agents were beginning to move out. Erwin touched the rings in his coat pocket as he spoke.

“Now what?” Levi asked. “Pixis isn't babysitting us anymore. And even if Intermipol graciously waits another, what, six hours? They're on our ass the second our time's up. And we still need to hear from Hange-”

“It needs to happen before our asylum ends.”

Levi looked at him, then at his chest where he knew Erwin kept the egret's codes.

“Unless,” Erwin added, “there is a concrete reason why we cannot.”

Levi didn't say anything, not immediately.

“Levi,” Erwin prompted softly, and he wanted to put a hand on his shoulder or his arm, but he didn't.

Levi met his eyes. “How long would it take to contact Egret's boss and know the codes are legit?”

“Too long.”

Levi looked away. He swallowed. “This code, these...numbers. They look legit?”

“Yes.”

“There's no...no weird shit, no spots that look off or wrong or whatever?”

“None.”

“Fuck,” Levi sighed. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and watched the remaining pair of Pixis' agents leave the park.

“Guess we gotta go, too,” Levi said. He handed Erwin a pistol – he and Charlie had gone to a nearby cache to rearm while Erwin spoke with Pixis. Erwin felt the ring in his pocket again and wondered why he hadn't yet told Levi, wondered why in the world he couldn't string together two words to explain something so innocuous. It wasn't guilt or shame at not having noticed the messenger, he wasn't nearly so petty. But that tightening in his chest wasn't shame, wasn't fear. Anxiety, maybe, but like none he'd ever felt, at least not recently. This strain didn't chill, didn't freeze. It boiled in his chest. It was just an ID. It was only an ID. 

Levi brought the bike over and cocked his head at him. “You alright?”

Erwin nodded absently. Before he could take his seat, Levi stopped him with a hand on his chest, on his coat and on the codes and his heart beneath even that.

“I...” Levi started. “Use them.”

Erwin trapped his hand with his own before he could pull away. “I believe in intuition, Levi. I won't act one way or the other without convincing evidence, but I won't bully your instincts away either-”

“Stop. Listen, I just...” Levi's hand curled into Erwin's coat where he held him, where Erwin was struck again by how something so small could wring his neck if it pleased him, could fell beasts that razed towers.

Levi chewed on his lip. It glistened, pink, when he released it to say, “I was paranoid, alright? After everything-”

Levi fell silent. Then Erwin heard it, too. Distant pops like fireworks. It wasn't the fourth of July.

Erwin's phone started ringing. Levi pulled him onto the bike and Erwin took the call as Levi started the engine and passed him a helmet.

“'Hey, boys,” said the caller, a woman's voice with a smoker's rasp. “west of the Overpass is a no-no.”

“Egret? How do you have this number?” Erwin asked. Levi stiffened as the bike roared to life and took them flying out of Battery Park.

Cellphone crackle distorted her laugh. “Knowing that ain't gonna get you out of – shit-” Gunfire echoed through the phone. The same pops echoed from their left, much closer. Passerby ran into shops and buildings. Police sirens wailed past them. Levi raced through alleyways and side streets so fast that their surroundings were soon only a blur.

Egret returned to the line. “Change of plans, they got you surrounded.”

“Who?”

A shot blew out their front tire. Levi swore and threw Erwin from the skidding motorcycle. Erwin landed hard on his shoulder as the out-of-control bike swerved into an alleyway and met its end in a deafening screech of metal. Erwin rolled onto his front and squinted through the plumes of kicked up dust and debris for Levi. He had to have jumped off in time. He should have jumped off in time.

“Radicals, baby!” Egret shouted from the phone where it had flown out of his hand. “Welcome home!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -I try not to introduce anything out of nowhere but the IDs have gotta have the longest payoff so far – Erwin mentioned wanting to replace them in chapter six.  
> -Keith's flight was discussed in ch10.
> 
> edit: holy shit. 100k.


	15. R. Egret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part one of our two-chapter act finale.
> 
> ♫ [ LDR: 24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9BKnNfH8qc)

 

“Hotter,” Hange demanded.

Moblit rushed over to the furnace's control panel. Hange shoveled in the last of the paper files and hard drives.

“I knew we needed that industrial shredder,” Hange said, sweat flying from the ends of their hair with every movement.

Moblit swept his hand across his damp forehead. “I don't think anything will survive five thousand degrees, Officer.”

Hange made a noncommittal grunt, screwed the furnace opening shut and bolted out of the basement, calling for Moblit to set the cooldown timer and follow.

“Officer, I still think,” Moblit started, huffing as he tried to match Hange's pace up the stairs, “it couldn't hurt to leave the data with an overseas-”

“If it's not safe here,” Hange called behind them,” it's not safe anywhere.”

Erwin had strict orders. Protect their data. Ensure that Intermipol does not destroy or take credit for their work. Erwin didn't specify how.

Hange estimated their capacity to recall dates, numbers and names ever since the visions started at somewhere between one and two terabytes before the migraines began. More than enough for their most sensitive intel. They didn't need written records anymore.

They reached the first floor landing and pried open a panel in the wall just out of sight of an Intermipol guard. The two slipped into the hidden corridor and made their way out of the building. Once outside, Hange pulled up their hood and yanked up Moblit's too before flagging down a cab to take them uptown, a few blocks shy of Hange's private lab. Moblit paid the cabbie and broke into a jog to match Hange's brisk walk.

“You'd tell me, right?” Hange asked suddenly. At Moblit's silence, Hange added, “You know. If you see those visions.”

Moblit huffed indignantly as if the answer was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Don't make fun,” Hange scolded.

“I wasn't-”

“I know. Just getting a lil' tired of being the last to know anything and the first to clean up.”

*

The street poured into his lungs. Erwin's hand shot up to muffle the sound of his coughing. The pained lance from his shoulder not-so-kindly informed him that the movement was a mistake. He swallowed a groan and felt around the joint, but to his knowledge, it was in one piece. Still, he tucked his right arm into his coat and rose before the dust settled.

Erwin rounded the corner into the alley. The sight was as horrific as the sound of the crash had been deafening. They must have been going sixty. Gunshots echoed over his head but every drop of his self preservation had long since been drained by the need to find Levi. The Survey Corps will survive without Erwin Smith, but one without Levi was poorer, so much poorer.

He kept low to the ground and rifled through the orgy of twisted metal and singed boxes and all the usual garbage that lined the city's alleys.

There was movement on his far left. He moved from cover to cover in case anyone who had heard the crash was making their way there, moving faster as the pile of cardboard and empty take-out containers moved again. Levi's hand rose from the mess to grab at Erwin as he hovered over him. He began to pull himself up.

“Wait,” Erwin said, seizing his hand and forcing him back down. Levi's hands and arms, like Erwin's, were scored raw from breaking his fall. He must have jumped off with less than a second to spare. Erwin wouldn't dare pick him up if he'd broken his neck or back. Levi breathed shallowly from inside his helmet and tried to hoist himself up again.

“Levi, wait,” Erwin said again, and removed his helmet. Levi's eyes were unfocused, glassy. As Erwin carved away at the surrounding trash, it was clearerthat Levi lay at an odd angle, twisted like a ragdoll.

“G' me up. Stinks,” Levi mumbled, the words slurred. Erwin fought down a thrum of panic.

“Don't get up. Make a fist with both hands, then wiggle your fingers.”

Levi stared, as if Erwin had said nothing at all. His ears must still ring. He pointed to Levi's hands and mimed what he wanted him to do.

Levi caught on, wincing as he curled his bloodied hands. Neither response seemed slower than the other. Erwin reached back and held his boots. “Now your toes.” He felt the left. The right was weaker. “Again.” He felt the left. The right was weaker.

Erwin ducked over Levi at another volley of gunshots. They were close.

Someone ducked into their alley.

Erwin's hand shot to Levi's mouth. He hunched over him, frozen. Whoever their visitor was, they would see them if they stepped just another meter closer to the dumpster that hid them. Erwin patted Levi's chest lightly to get his attention, his shoulder stinging at the simple strain. Slowly, tortuously, Levi's eyes swiveled to attention.

 _If I'm caught, play dead_ , Erwin signed. Levi's brows shot down and his mouth opened to argue. Erwin moved his hand again to Levi's mouth and raised a finger to his own lips. Glass crunched between the heels of the gunman. Levi's eyes became unfocused again, lids heavy. Erwin reached for his pistol.

The gunman left the way he came.

Erwin removed his hand from Levi's mouth and lifted the hem of his jacket and shirt. At the first touch of his fingers along his back, Levi hissed. Erwin froze, every horrifying possibility flashing in his mind before Levi's lips moved.

“Jus' cold,” Levi muttered, blood smeared across his face from where Erwin had held him. Erwin nodded and moved again, pressing along each notch, feeling for tenderness or swelling, watching Levi's face for a response and cursing his astronomical tolerance for pain. His eyes gradually became more focused, and his blinking less laborious. The gunfire wasn't moving away.

“Noth' brok'n,” Levi slurred, annoyed as Erwin commanded he move his toes again. The right was still weaker.

“We can't stay here. I'll need to carry you somewhere inside,” Erwin whispered, signing his words and ignoring Levi's frown. “If at any point, you feel pain-”

“I got it, ol' man,” Levi said. Erwin stooped to slip his arms around him as Levi's arms wound around Erwin's neck. Erwin bit back another groan as one arm settled heavily on his right shoulder.

Levi breathed hard against his neck as Erwin lifted him, but he made no pained sounds and punched weakly at Erwin's back when he asked again how he felt. Erwin began to move out of the alley. Somewhere behind them, a safety was released.

Erwin turned. A shot rang. The same gunman from before dropped his weapon and crumpled to his feet. Another stood behind him, rifle raised, the difference between them stark even at a glance. The one on the ground looked like he hadn't washed himself in weeks, much less his equipment or clothing. The man who stood over him could have been mistaken for a member of SWAT had there been any insignia on his vest or helmet.

The man kicked the dead gunman's pistol toward Erwin. Levi's hands dug into his coat as Erwin opened his coat to show the man the pistol in his shoulder holster. The man nodded and cocked his head once out of the alley.

Another joined them. Levi's hand shot into Erwin's coat for the gun and raised it as the first man raised his arms. The newcomer only watched. He first raised the visor on his helm and called out:

“Egret wants to see you.”

Levi didn't put it down. “She can make an appointment.”

The appearance of these two seemed to have shocked him into lucidity. Not a single tremor troubled the gun at the end of his raised arm, and Erwin didn't doubt that if he wanted to shoot, he'd hit his target between the eyes. Neither of these men, however, were their targets.

“We don't have options, Levi,” Erwin said in his ear.

“It's her again,” Levi seethed into his neck. “Our white fucking knight. She's playing us.”

“It's either Egret, the radicals, or the NYPD.”

He didn't need to mention how many decades ago Intermipol had bought the NYPD's cooperation.

Levi lowered the gun. He didn't put it away.

Egret's men lead them through basements and alleyways. Erwin needed to stop and take a knee several times, but he shot down Levi's attempts at getting to his feet, convincing him that having a pair of eyes at their backs was worth the strain.

They were unceremoniously shoved into the backseat of a scuffed, unmarked black car waiting for them at the end of a street. They took off, keeping to side roads. The man sitting shotgun threw a glance at them and called ahead for a medical team. A trickle of something slithered behind Erwin's ear. He couldn't tell if it was sweat or blood.

Siren-wail had long since engulfed the pop of gunfire before that, too, withered away. Levi's hand tightened on Erwin's pistol as he rested his head on his lap. Erwin's straining shoulder competed with his throbbing foot for attention. His right hand trembled in Levi's hair.

By the time the car doors flew open, Levi had moved himself to a sitting position, convinced now that he could tell up from down that it was his leg that had been struck and not his back. He leaned on Erwin as they were ushered inside a building and then into an elevator, flanked by Egret's men as Erwin tried to decipher what was happening through their radio chatter. The doors opened to the top floor.

They were taken through one locked door after another, through one empty hall after another, rising higher, always higher. Just when Erwin was sure they were heading for the roof, their escort gestured into an equipment room just left of the entrance to the roof where a pair of medics marked by the crosses on their shoulders rose immediately as Egret's men stood watch outside.

Where are we?” Levi demanded.

“Egret will come down soon,” one of the medics said as they stripped them of their coats and boots.

“I said-” But the medics must have had their share of difficult patients, because none of his squirming and demanding deterred them from cleaning his scored hands and prodding at his leg. Erwin let a medic clean his wounds and change the bandages on his foot as he looked around. Whatever equipment had been in the room had been shoved aside to make room for a makeshift clinic, but Erwin saw no other patients, and the medical equipment did not look as if it were used or even touched before their arrival. They saw no others, too, and the building may as well be empty for all they knew. He wasn't given much more time to ponder it.

A woman burst through the door and shoved it shut behind her. “Aren't you two a sight,” she said.

Her voice was the only thing Erwin recognized. Black kevlar and leather replaced fishnet and denim and all her violet hair was tucked into a ratty black cap.

“Oh, look, it's the warden,” Levi spat.

“Good to see you again, too,” Egret said to Levi, and then to Erwin with considerably less humor, “Cut it a little close, there, chief. Shoulda left town soon as you came to shore.”

So she had been watching them. She may have followed them all the way from the forest. All the way from The Ring.

“I assume you intend to earn our trust,” Erwin said.

“Well, that ain't a bad place to be-” she started.

“Then following us and watching our movements is a poor first step.”

“Not when the second is bailing you out of a warzone,” Egret said as the medics finished with Erwin's foot and readjusted the mobile cast.

“She led them here,” Levi said to Erwin of the radicals. He'd considered it himself.

“Nope,” Egret said, and then in cheery singsong “But I know who did.” She pulled out a tape recorder and switched it on.

Three individuals discussed leaking information to “those cannibals” - information concerning the whereabouts of one Erwin Smith. It was scratchy. A minute long.

“George Feriday. John Welston. Sophia Klein,” Egret said. Her face lit up as Erwin's brows descended.

Feriday and Klein are on Intermipol's board of directors, the dozen-strong collective whose authority supersedes even the chiefs who oversee individual regions. John Welston is the executive director of the north american branch of Iaso Industries.

“A little birdie in Munich brought me this gem just this morning,” Egret said. “Aaaand it's yours.” She tossed the recorder to Erwin. Levi caught it and brushed off the medic fussing with a scratch on his forehead.

“You said before we shoulda left town,” Levi started.

“We're on a tight schedule here, so let's save the coyness for later,” she said, then turned to Erwin. “I know what those codes are for.” As Erwin and Levi shared a look, she added, “Oh, not the dirty details. Just enough to know we're all in for a real shitshow this time tomorrow. Hope you've got that flight booked to Bermuda or Hawaii or wherever.”

Something in Erwin's face or in his silence must have revealed too much. Egret narrowed her eyes. “You… _are_ leaving. Right?” She turned to Levi. “Right?”

“I suppose it won't be a secret for much longer,” Erwin said. “No.”

Egret laughed nervously. “Must be a hell of a bunker you got here...”

Levi suddenly turned to look at him as if for the first time in a long time.

“You're turning yourself in,” he said.

*

They used a hidden entrance to get inside the lab in case Intermipol had rooted it out, but to their relief, they found it untouched. In all the excitement of securing decades of research, Hange had forgotten their own notebook. A handful of lab assistants stood at attention as they unlocked the reinforced doors.

“Officer Zoe,” one said, “we did what you said.”

“Good work, Rosa,” Hange called out as they flew down into the basement.

Moblit followed. Hange heard his gasp as they hopped over the decimated remains of the machine to their desk in the far corner of the atrium-sized underground lab.

“What have you done?” Moblit said behind them. Metal fragments crunched under his heels.

“No tears,” Hange said as they rooted through the drawers. “On the list of things Intermipol isn't allowed to see this is kinda up there with my third grade diary. Look, I know you helped put it toge-”

“Who cares about me?” Moblit said, louder than before. Hange shot him a brief look over their shoulder. “You-” Moblit went on, “y-you – this was your life's work. You didn't sleep, didn't eat, you- for months, you – how could you do this?”

Hange shut the drawer more forcefully than they intended. The notebook must be somewhere else. They took a seat at their ratty swivel chair.

“You know why I'm here? Like, in the Survey Corps?” Hange asked.

“Because,” Moblit said, flinging his arms wide as if he didn't know where to begin. “You're brilliant, you're talented, you're-”

“Luck.”

Moblit's arms slowly descended. He cocked his head as if he hadn't heard correctly.

“I'm here 'cause if you'd taken a second longer to call the Corps, if Erwin had happened to be in a meeting when you called or if he'd gotten stuck in traffic jam or a million other things separating him from that interrogation room, a nice man from Intermipol woulda offered me my life back. And I would've taken it.”

“You don't mean that-”

“I haven't seen my mom in years. Everyone I've ever known before the Survey Corps thinks I'm either dead or a fugitive. So if that nice man had offered me that golden ticket, I would've marched into a reintegration center myself. Willingly. Gladly. Before I knew. Before Erwin would have had a chance to tell me.”

Hange never did tell Moblit exactly how Erwin had convinced them to join the Survey Corps. There was no need then. It didn't matter. Hange had just barely escaped life in prison for a laundry list of convictions. Fraud. Theft. Illegal research. They had just barely escaped, too, Intermipol's lobotomous reintegration centers.

Moblit waited silently, because when Hange chose their words with a care to rival Erwin's, one waited.

“He told me I was right. Then he told me to do something about it. Nicer than that, but that was the gist. Now I hear Intermipol is working with radicals. The same people so quick to fuck with mom and dad's brains and convince them they slammed that old car into a house instead of a titan, so quick to slap a band-aid on an open sore, these same people are doing business with people who'd lick titan ass if they could. Bet they've tried.”

“I gave 'em mom and dad and everyone else who meant a thing to me before I knew better,” Hange said. “But I know better now. If I'd worked on this thing for a hundred years, I'd trash it just as quick if Intermipol was at the gates. They're never taking anything, anyone, from me again.”

 

*

He didn't look at Erwin again, and Erwin couldn't decide whether it was a blessing or a curse that Levi found out this way, when bothwere loathe to react in front of Egret the way they might have wanted. Surely, Erwin hadn't needed to spell it out. He'd spoken more than once about exposing only himself, only his face and his voice to Intermipol, implicating no other man or woman but himself.

He needed the world to see, to believe, to trust. He would not ask a soul to trust a man who hides, a man who runs. No, he knew what needed to be done the moment the film was conceived. He knew there could be no half-measures. He hadn't imagined Mike or Hange or Levi would think otherwise.

Egret's eyes shot between one and the other, waiting for the punchline. “You can't be serious,” she said. Levi said nothing. She turned to him, scrutinizing. “You didn't know either.”

“You want your dirty details, ask the commander,” Levi said. His voice didn't waver. His expression didn't budge. Erwin didn't dare attempt to defend himself now, not with Egret in the room. But he wanted to. He wanted to like he needed to breathe.

Egret turned to Erwin. “You can't do that.”

“I wasn't aware I needed permission,” Erwin said and stood. The medics finished up and began to pack their things.

“Look,” Egret said, and Erwin caught the first traces of panic in her voice, “my people are good. We're damn good. But busting you out of a reintegration center?”

Levi shut his eyes at the words.

“I will be placed in a holding cell pending prosecution,” Erwin said. “There will be no reintegration center-”

“You can't be serious-” Egret started.

“Incidentally,” Levi interrupted and stood, approaching her. “When were you planning on letting us leave?”

“Shit, whenever the hell you want,” she said, gesturing to the door. “Just safer to talk in person, and I think you two will want to hear-”

A shrill ring started up from somewhere on her person. “Emergency line,” she muttered to him and dug her phone out of a trouser pocket. Levi shot Erwin as look as he stood and flanked her while she listened.

Egret's eyes widened. She pocketed her phone, the movement stilted.

“Someone leave the oven on?” Levi drawled.

Egret didn't answer. She cocked her head at the medics, who took the sign to mean pack up and get out _now_. Levi stood in the doorway after their departure. The fading light filtered meekly through the windows into the darkened room, robbed of the harsh lamps the medics dragged away with them.

“Either of you familiar,” Egret started slowly, “with the Harrison BM-90?”

“Why?” Levi asked.

Erwin was familiar with the model, but only in writing. The rifle was legendary in what few circles even knew of its existence.

“Because,” Egret went on, looking at neither of them and dragging her words, “the only person in my merry band who could fire it is now shooting the shit with Saint Peter.”

Levi hobbled over to Erwin on the cast that supported his shin splint and dragged him to the door. “We'll send flowers,” he drawled.

Erwin stopped at the door. He thought he saw a smile at the corner of her mouth, as if she knew he wouldn't be able to leave it at that.

“And why,” Erwin asked, “do you need a man who can fire a gun like that?”

“I'm glad you asked,” Egret stretched out, and now Erwin knew for certain that she had gotten what she wanted, “'cause its sitting all lonesome on the roof when it could be burying the guy who ordered the hit on you. Tracked him for hours. Radical captain. Likes to go by Kronos.”

Levi froze. Erwin himself stifled the combined lance of fear, of anticipation, of recognition that charged through his limbs.

“Kronos,” he echoed.

“These copycats are something else, right?” Egret snorted, and only then did Erwin recall just how often radicals donned that name like a badge, like a medal. He'd almost forgotten asking Mike to run a search on Kronos copycats before he had set off for The Ring a few lifetimes ago – one that must have fallen victim to Intermipol's prying fingers because Erwin had found nothing of it in Mike's files.

This could be their Kronos. The name Mike saw in his visions, the name Levi's counterpart had spoken in The Ring. Yet, it was a statistical improbability. Every other radical captain the Corps has ever tracked down, captured or slain went by that name. He didn't know whether it was better or worse for them that this may well just be a cruel coincidence.

“Didn't drag you two here by accident. Northwest corner of the roof is the safest spot for a clean shot. No other gun has a range like the BM-90. If we go in any closer, they'll find us and hide, and it's back to cat and mouse for another three months. Unless,” she said, looking pointedly at Levi, “one of you knows how to pick off a man on the other side of Central Park.”

“We don't,” Levi snapped.

Egret tutted.

Erwin reached for his phone. “We can contact a Corps sniper-”

“Our snipers don't use BM-90s,” Levi said.

“Intermipol's got you all wired to hell and back anyway,” Egret said.

“Then we'll find another way.”

“Your Pixis bubble bursts in…” She checked her phone. “Six hours. Gotta leave an hour or two to make sure the codes get where they're going before the show starts.”

“What else is there, then?” Erwin asked. And at Egret's knowing look, he added, “And why do you look like the answer is staring us in the face?”

“'Cause it is,” she said, looking at Levi.

Erwin turned to him. “Do you know how to-”

“No,” Levi said too quickly.

He was lying.

Egret grinned. “All this wank about truth and trust and whatever,” Egret said, “And your own man's been holding onto a tiny little secret that isn't so tiny anymore.”

Erwin ignored the implication behind _your own man_ and searched Levi's face. Levi stared at the floor, drilled holes in it. He looked like he did in the forest. He looked like he wanted to run.

“Egret,” Erwin said, “Have you and Levi met before?” He watched Levi as he asked it. He watched, with a pleasure that he'll be sure to be ashamed of later, of the mortification that set Levi's jaw and hollowed his eyes that Erwin would trust Egret's answer sooner than Levi's.

“No,” Egret said, and Erwin turned to her, no sense in masking his surprise. “But he was supposed to give me something. Figured at first he hadn't received it, but I checked in with the boss. He did.”

The boss. Egret's boss. Erwin heart roared in his ears. Somehow, Levi had received something from Egret's employer, maybe even from his own hands. It was impossible, unless he'd gotten it from within The Ring, or well before. Suddenly, Erwin wasn't sure why Levi couldn't have gotten it before, long before. How long Levi might have had two commanders, two sets of orders, two allegiances. How long Levi had been someone else's spy.

“I didn't know,” Levi breathed.

“What didn't you know?” Erwin demanded.

Levi opened his mouth but he didn't answer. Erwin wondered if he couldn't, and then he stopped wondering, because he had made enough excuses for his sake, had belayed too much doubt. The dam was breaking now, and all of it, every drop, poured out to drown him.

Egret clapped once sharply. “Uh, tick tock, boys, you can break my heart later.” To Levi, she said, “So how about it? The message.”

“What does this have to do with the radi-” Levi started.

“Everything. Come on,” she said, snapping her fingers, “Any second now.”

“You said you checked in with your boss. You know what he wanted me to say-”

“Won't work if I say it,” Egret said.

“What won't work?” Erwin asked Levi.

“I don't know,” Levi said, a thrum of panic in him now.

“Would that I believed it now,” Erwin said with no little disdain.

Levi cast his eyes down, and Erwin couldn't imagine why he would continue denying when it was so clear he knew something Erwin didn't, why he would look away as if he was ashamed, as if he hadn't known that this would be the logical conclusion to weeks, maybe months of not-so -little and not-so-white lies.

“Tell me what to do,” Levi said to him, and Erwin might have thought he was mocking him if not for how he said it, nearly whispered it. Powerless. Defeated.

Erwin glanced once at Egret, who had been keeping mercifully quiet. “Tell her,” Erwin said, “what she wants to know.”

Levi looked up at Egret with so much open hatred in his eyes that the burn of betrayal almost stopped curdling his blood.

“I'm the jackdaw.”

 

*

“Officer Zoe!”

Moblit and Hange looked up as Rosa, R&D's senior research assistant, bounded down the stairs.

“Officer Zoe, Mister Moblit,” she panted, “The commander is in the city.”

Hange gave her a thumbs up and overturned their drawers. That notebook held months of records of their visions. Even if Intermipol had nothing to do with them, there was no end to what they could do to Hange or any of them with that information sharpening the tip of their spear.

Suddenly, hands shook Hange's shoulders. Moblit's voice cut into their thoughts.

“Officer, are you hearing this?”

“Yeah, yeah, they're here, just give me a second...” A folded piece of paper drifted out of a book on continual-activation theory. It wasn't theirs.

“Hange!” Moblit cut in again. “Are you listening? They were caught in a radical incursion!”

“Yeah-” Hange said distantly. They sank into a crouch and smoothed out the page. “One… one second...”

 

 _Sorry – borrowed your notebook. Not enough time. Need proof I'm not losing it alone. P_ _ROTECT BECKERT._ _If Erwin plans to give himself in, invoke our contract. I'm doing it now, in writing. I should have realized sooner._

 

“That's Mike's handwriting,” Moblit said, reading over Hange's shoulder.

Rosa wrung her hands beside them. “I'm...I'm sorry to interrupt,” Rosa said, “But I just got word from one of our security teams in hiding – Intermipol's moving in.”

“What do you mean, moving in?” Hange demanded.

“They weren't clear, it was too risky to keep talking, but...do you think they might pin this incursion on-”

“Us,” Hange said.

“How?” Moblit asked.

“Doesn't matter,” Hange said, then laughed, because it was funny. It was hilarious. “They bled us until it didn't matter. Rosa, take the team and run. Your orders are to not be found.”

Rosa swallowed thickly and nodded before heading up the stairs to inform the others with a parting “Good luck, officers.” She'd known it was coming. Everyone had known. Whatever happened next, and whatever the Survey Corps used to be, it would never be again.

Moblit stood. “We should go too – Hange?”

Hange had taken too long recovering from the shock of their first prolonged vision. Even now, everything that happened in it, all the questions Hange had and every question answered meant nothing. Mike had written and slipped this into Hange's office before the occupation, maybe even minutes before it began. Maybe he was already facing arrest. Maybe he had run out of time.

But all the logic and all the hand-waving in the world didn't stop the doubled weight of betrayal sinking into their limbs. From Mike, who ran from the wolves. From Erwin, who intended to throw himself in their path. From the both of them, who had been content to watch Hange sink into obsession for months as they made decisions over their head and left them and Nanaba to play clean up.

“Hange?”

They shouldn't think like that. Not now. For all they knew, Erwin might have breathed his last at the end of the barrel of a gun while Hange wasted time with something as pedestrian as regret.

“Levi. What about Levi?”

Moblit blinked. “As far as we know, he's with the commander.”

Hange nodded absently. They let Moblit lead them out of the ruined lab for the last time.

If Levi was with Erwin, then Erwin was alive. If Levi lived, then Erwin was safe.

 

*

 

Levi collapsed.

All his doubts and misgivings vanished. Erwin rushed to his side and caught him before his head hit the floor. For a sickening moment, Erwin couldn't feel him breathe. Then he began to choke.

“Oh,” Egret said at his shoulder. “I didn't realize it'd be this…”

Erwin left Levi's head on his lap and dragged Egret to her knees by her jacket. His grip snapped the collar of it against her throat. “What did you do?”

“Eas-y, he's – he's okay, just let 'im-” she choked.

Before Erwin could finish describing what he would do to her if she didn't tell him what she'd done, Levi's choking gave way to deep, greedy gulps of air, as if he'd been drowning, as if he had just come up for air.

Erwin watched him pick himself up and stare ahead blankly as if the last few seconds had been scored out of his memory.

“Le-” he started.

“Hold,” Egret said as she slipped out of Erwin's slackening grip and rose. Erwin rose too, but when he took a step toward Levi, Levi stepped back. Levi didn't look him in the eye. He didn't look at him at all.

“Orders,” Levi said, and it was no voice Erwin ever remembered him using. Pliant. Subserviant.

Erwin opened his mouth to speak. Egret beat him to it. In no voice he'd yet heard from her either, she rattled off, “Roof. Northwest corner. Ria Hotel, twenty-third floor. White male. Scar on left temple.”

Without another word, and without so much as a glance at Erwin, Levi turned and left the room. Erwin's bid to follow was stopped by Egret's iron grip on his arm.

“He needs to concentrate,” she said.

Jackdaw. A trigger word, or phrase. Though the Silver's gave their operatives a long leash, this sort of conditioning was not unprecedented. Erwin couldn't believe he'd never considered it before. Erwin was no stranger to them. Intermipol was so fond of them that recovery for operatives who had gone through their reintegration centers took twice, sometimes three times as long for that reason alone. Levi was a Silver for years, more than enough time for the organization to install any number of triggers or kill switches into their favorite asset.

“I can hear the gears turning up there,” Egret said. “You probably wanna know, it's only fair. What just happened, I mean.”

“I'll admit, it's creative,” Erwin said coldly. “The psychological triggers I've come across usually function when a handler says it, not the object of control. The Silvers are not as dead as they want the world to believe.”

“I'm not a Silver.”

“I can't think of a crueler organization to use something like this to keep their men in line. Intermipol is another. Neither endear me to you.”

She frowned. “Good, 'cause we're neither. Whether or not the Silvers were up to that kinda stuff is none of my business-”

“It's my business that my best officer is unrecognizable to me. It's very much my business that after hours of apparently well-founded suspicion, my officer is suddenly taking orders from you.”

She smacked her gums. “I'm shit at this. Don't know why the boss sent me. Listen. What's a toaster to a caveman?”

“You'll have to forgive me if I don't leap from A to Z quite like you do.”

“Right. Cliffnotes version. You boys have been having some rough nights these past months, yeah?”

The ground beneath them could have buckled and Erwin would not be the wiser. So it was her. Egret's people were behind the visions. Erwin didn't know what he had imagined. Some grand declaration, maybe, something memorable and cinematic. He didn't know what he'd expected from the arbiter of their suffering for the last six months. So little, and yet so much more than this.

There was something else. You boys. Unless Egret was generalizing, it was curious that she would refer to the four of them this way, Hange included. That is, unless Erwin knew something Egret did not.

“You boys?” Erwin asked innocently.

She scoffed. “Alright. You men,” she said, taking the bait. “Gentlemen. Esteemed officers. You and Levi.”

Erwin hid his surprise. Egret knew of his visions and Levi's, but not Mike's, not Hange's. It may just be beyond her pay grade, or she excluded them simply because they weren't immediately present, and yet, Erwin wondered if there were some things that Egret or her employer did not know, things they might not have foreseen.

“You might say that,” Erwin said.

“I might, and I do. Listen, back to the toaster-”

“I'd rather not.”

“Please, bear with me. I only mean that to a lil' old caveman, that toaster, that crummy old-ass toaster would be the most alien thing in the world. But to us, it's nothing. Shit, we don't even gotta go that far. Napoleon would shit himself if you gave him a laptop. And you, well, you guys would probably think I've got a screw loose if I even suggested there was-”

“A multiverse.”

She froze. He could almost see her replaying what he said in her mind again, and again. “Fuck,” she finally said like she'd been punched in the gut. She stared at him, her face warring between disbelief and shock. “Now who's goin' A to Z?”

“So it's true.”

“Yeah, but you sure stole my thunder. So you knew. You've been stringing me along this whole time, haven't you?”

He couldn't take credit for the leap, but he prided himself anyway on putting Hange's work together. Though they hadn't discussed the visions in person, Erwin wasn't blind to Hange's thoughts. He'd kept in contact with Moblit and asked, as conversationally as he was able, what Hange was reading. Moblit was smart. He knew it was no idle question, and definitely not when Erwin asked it every time they spoke, but he gave Erwin his answer, or whatever answer Hange allowed him to give. And those answers were telling. He didn't even need to read the books or visit the websites, although, time permitting, he did – their names were enough. Putting them together with what he saw when he closed his eyes was enough. That is, given a generously, if not egregiously, open mind.

“Yes and no,” he said. “I can't say I'm sure of anything anymore.”

A multiverse. And not only the existence of one, but contact between one reality and the next. It should be impossible. He should be condemning it to the realm of science fiction and yet when he had done the same with the walls behind his closed eyes, they grew only taller, and the blood that ran within them, beyond them, for them, ran all the deeper. He was a resident of a grain of sand contemplating the desert. A denizen of a mote of dust questioning a hurricane.

“Fair enough,” Egret said. “Then-”

“Then allow me to understand,” Erwin interrupted. He paced toward her. “Your employer – who I have never seen, never spoken to, and whose objectives I can only guess at – has somehow remotely induced visions and hallucinations in Levi and myself for the last several months.”

She stepped back. “Yes, but-”

“Setting aside for the moment how deeply disturbing and unethical I find that, your employer and yourself have also taken it upon yourselves to make my best officer into your puppet at will-”

“That's not quite-”

“-and have shown up twice now to either deliver an item we desperately need,” he said, taking the folder from his coat as he backed her into a wall, “or to be our blessed saviors. All this because, for some reason, your frighteningly advanced civilization or parallel universe or whatever you like to call it, is terribly interested in us cavemen.”

As Egret stammered, Erwin recalled that he had seen Levi switch completely once before. He had spoken to that man in The Ring, the one Levi so desperately wanted to lock up that he strung the chains around his own wrists, the one who seemed to recognize Erwin and tell him in as few words that Kronos didn't belong here. But there were hundreds of radicals who went by that name. He might have meant what he'd said metaphorically – Kronos, radicals, titans – any of those groups, didn't belong here. Here. On this side. Erwin was inclined to agree.

He wasn't as eager to agree with the messenger's method.

“Now, maybe toaster and caveman weren't the right-”

“I doubt an analogy exists to service this situation, Miss Egret.”

“Oh god, not with the Miss, I get enough of it with the boss-”

“So why are you so interested in our side, our universe? Is yours so far gone?”

“You got it backwards, chief, we're doing just fine. Our titans are long gone.”

Again, her wording struck him. _Our_ titans. Did the beasts blight every universe? Did they look the same, act the same, eat the same way as theirs? But he filed that away. Something more important needed addressing.

“Then you have the answer to the most catastrophic crisis mankind has faced in its history, and you've figured out how to...travel or switch between universes or realities so that you can-” here he stopped and gestured outside, “-take potshots at radicals?”

“Where do you suggest I go with these “answers” you think I have? Intermipol? Nah, chief, our titans were a little different from yours…but it'd take too long to explain the details. And you're not interested in details, I think, not now. When your man takes the shot, you gotta go. You'll be late for your own world premier.”

It figured that on the eve of the film's release, this behemoth that Erwin and so, so many people died and bled and lied for, seemed now a drop in an ocean, every ocean, on every Earth that ever was, is, and will be. On all the earths where the Survey Corps succeeded. On all the earths where Intermipol swallowed it whole.

Egret snorted. “Besides. This whole universe-hopping thing might make us out to look like gods or whatever, but that ain't it at all. We all eat and sleep and shit like any of you. We bleed when we're hit and hate stubbing our toes,” she said, and Erwin could almost believe her. “Way the boss figures it, we've only got a few hundred years on you guys if we're talkin' tech capability.”

She reached into her jacket, and Erwin became all too aware that he was short one pistol. But what she withdrew looked like no weapon he'd ever seen, no gadget he'd ever seen. At a glance, it had the stocky silhouette of an old phone without the antenna, but the sleek finish of something much more modern – or more than modern. She flicked open a hidden panel with her nail and pressed down.

Erwin's coat began to hover. Tendrils slithered out of his coat pocket and reached into the air until one curled into whatever it was that Egret held in her palm. First contact made, the rest of the device Erwin had found in the remains of the ruptured titan curled in on itself and snapped into place against Egret's half. She held it out.

“Peace offering. Throw it out, take it apart, use it, whatever.”

Erwin took the paired tracking device and turned it over in his hand. There had been no shot in the forest, no grenade, nothing to account for the totality of the beast's destruction but this collection of wires and filaments that resisted expulsion by winding, knitting itself into the titan's flesh, into its bones. The titan that had cleared the cache they needed of its Intermipol guard right as they arrived. The titan that had ruptured just as Erwin had been in earnest danger – almost as if it had been activated remotely.

“Only a few centuries,” Erwin whispered.

“Don't get me wrong, our history's not yours. We don't have your Napoleons or Shakespeares, but _you_ don't have our Dininskins and our Rindenfelhs.”

His ears caught the accent she had almost successfully hidden when she spoke those names. “So you're not native English speakers either. There is no English on your side. No Spanish, no Russian or Tagalog, none of it.”

Egret gave him a hard look. As if she wasn't sure if she should say it, she said, “No, sir. But see,” she continued quickly, “we're not as different as you think, we're really-”

And Erwin wondered why. He wondered why this was a point of hesitation, why Egret was so eager to distract him from this line of thought. He considered what would have been his next question, and it was undoubtedly to know how they spoke English so well, how it was unaccented and could have well been mistaken for a native speaker's. And to that, he'd wonder, maybe to himself or maybe aloud, just how long it had taken her and her associates to become so proficient, and whether they learned it on their side or on Erwin's. He'd ask how long they waited for this moment. How long they had prepared. How many years. How many centuries.

All her fumbling about toasters and cavemen and mocking her own inability to properly explain the situation was a ruse. All her downplaying was itself a play. He admired her. She'd nearly fooled him.

Erwin believed the line about their technology being several centuries removed from their own. He couldn't even identify the materials in the object he held, nor whether it was manufactured in Egret's reality and transported over to his own through some sort of molecular transference, or if Erwin's own world already possessed the materials and processes necessary to create it, and only lacked the logical technological progression that allowed this singular object to exist. There was no straight line between the Corps' attempt at titan tracking technology and theirs. There was no straight line between an arrowhead and a laser. Never in his life had Erwin imagined that he'd be this far out of his depth.

“Hey,” Egret said softly. “Lost you for a bit. I know it's a lot-”

“No. No, it's fine.” He glanced at the door.

She followed his eye. “Could be two seconds or two hours. Gotta wait it out.”

Wait it out. Maybe that's what they had been doing. Waiting Erwin out. Waiting out the rise and fall of the Survey Corps. Waiting until this precise moment in history when the Corps would become most vulnerable in its open rebellion against the International Military Police, until a power vacuum opened where Intermipol or the Survey Corps fell, so that Egret and her people could – what?

“Why walls?”

Egret turned to him. “Hm?”

“Why do I see walls when I close my eyes? Walls farther than I can see in both directions?” He looked at Egret. “Or is everyone on your end fond of incomprehensible analogies and allegories?”

Egret clamped down on their surprise, but not fast enough. It was troubling, the idea that these people might be messing with something that might well be far out of their control if they not only weren't aware that Hange and Mike dreamed too, but didn't know what Erwin himself saw either. Egret shrugged. “We try like hell, but we... can't always control what you see,” she said, and Erwin's fears were confirmed.

Still, Erwin's brows rose, because it was a startlingly honest admission.

“But you can control some things.”

“We do what we can. Those dreams of yours, they should be starting to make more sense now-”

“How so?”

She gave him a knowing look. “Alright, I'll humor you, but I think you know what I'm talking about. First few months, you got those awful ones. Like….like trying to read a book but turning the pages too fast. That's the system cycling you through, trying to get a proper lock on the right universe. Getting you to the right page.”

“I think this is your best analogy yet.”

“I do try,” Egret said. “Don't sweat it. Once you're locked, the garbage starts to filter out fast. The pages quit turning so fast and you can finally read the damn words.”

Erwin mulled through her phrasing. Locked in. Cycling through. It sounded like just another piece of software, and the multiverse, an intricate network that could be played with. Despite the incredibly high probability that she's been pulling his leg this entire time, the thought of it is fascinating, and if by that slightest chance any of this is even the slightest bit true, she was revealing so much that Erwin could barely keep up with every new bit of information. He could digest it for months.

“Gotta say, you're taking this whole multiverse thing very well.”

“It's not exactly a new idea,” Erwin said, and it wasn't a stretch. Theorists have been making great strides in recent years, but nothing like this. Never like this. “And I have...imaginative friends.”

“I'll bet. I also bet you'd like to know who my boss is.”

He did. Desperately. He just never imagined that it would be Egret who would bring it up, and so cavalierly.

“I understand that's need-to-know,” Erwin teased.

“Well?” she goads. “Do you need to know?”

He won't know if she's telling the truth, but either way, Erwin's curious. “Yes.”

“You might recognize him,” she said, and at that, Erwin already knew. “Gentleman goes by Erwin Smith.”

He searched her face, but somehow, he would be willing to believe that one, too. Suddenly, it made sense why she acted so familiar around him, how she knew what to say and how to say it to placate him or goad him. What not to say. He could almost believe her.

“Interesting.”

“Wild, right?”

“I take it this means your organization is something like the Survey Corps.”

Egret shrugged. “Sure. Our titans are long gone, so we've kinda moved into the rest of the peace-keeping business. Spreading our wings, so to speak.”

Erwin couldn't imagine a world so peaceful that all that was left to do was to offer a hand to another. Egret wanted to dearly to impress him, to right her wrongs and lend a hand and walk him patiently through a situation that was starting to look like it would be more at home as the premise of a Twilight Zone special, and yet with this tracking device alone, they were decades, centuries ahead of the Survey Corps.

They wanted something from the Survey Corps. From Erwin. Until he knew precisely what it was, he was at a disadvantage no matter how many more favors Egret so generously offered. He would need to play nice. And despite all their wrongs, they were a powerful ally to have.

Himself. Working with himself. He tried to imagine the logistics of somehow working together with the man leading the troops beyond the walls. But something was off. Their technology was definitely not centuries beyond Erwin's own. Even the 3DMG was not advanced as much as it was innovative and tailored to the necessities of their time – a time that was not anywhere near peaceful. The titans there were very much alive.

“I've never seen you within the walls.”

“Oh… uh...well. I'm not from that town.”

“So you have contact with more than one reality.”

“Nope, just yours and mine. See, you were _supposed_ to be locked into ours, but that kinda…didn't work the way it should have. Part of the reason we don't mind letting you in on all this now that we're sure the visions opened your eyes a little – apart from, you know, honestly wanting to help you guys clean up this titan mess, believe it or not – we wanna know why you see those walls, too. On that, we pretty much know as much as you do. Less, actually. All we have are coordinates. You, Mr. Smith, have the full experience.”

Erwin thought again of Hange and Mike. If what she said was true, if whatever machine or process that allowed them to cross over could only lock onto one universe at a time, then not only are they perfectly unaware of Hange's or Mike's visions, but of their own capabilities. At the moment, Erwin was entirely certain of two things. Egret's people were capable of remotely inducing hallucinatory connections between individuals and their counterparts between two realities, and, more disturbingly, they were unaware of how many people they had truly affected.

“But hey, we got the next best thing,” Egret added.

Levi. Levi knew Egret, clearly – maybe not his Levi, not entirely, but certainly his double. Her Levi. The words curdled something unpleasant in his chest.

That meant, of the two of them,only Levi was locked into Egret's universe, the universe of this other Erwin who commands her and him. It meant Levi might have meant every word he said, every vague suspicion he voiced.

“You have Levi.”

She nodded grimly. “For what's he's worth.”

Erwin felt a surge of something like indignation. “And what is he worth?”

A shot rang out, pressing at his ears even with several solid walls between himself and the Harrison. He ran out and made his way to the roof despite Egret's protests, making his way past another pair of Egret's men at the doors and toward the shape of a man moving away from a mounted gun one and a half times longer than he was tall. Night had long since dropped its veil, but Erwin knew his silhouette, knew it through dark and rain and snow.

“Levi,” Erwin called out as he reached him. Levi stepped back. He still didn't look at him, and when Erwin forced himself into his line of sight, his eyes fell to the floor of the roof.

“Target neutralized,” Levi droned as Egret caught up. She motioned behind them. Suddenly, far more than two guards flanked them. The rest slipped in from the shadows, shoving themselves between Erwin and Levi. One of them whispered something to Egret and passed Levi's pistol to her, along with a satchel. She passed it to Erwin.

In it were all the weapons Levi carried on his person. Every knife, every pin and needle, every capsule and pill and pinhead-sized explosive. They had searched their own man. One of their own.

“Good,” Egret said. “Switch and standby,” she said, and she used that voice again, sharp and clear and direct like a trainer would to a dog. She waited with her eyes on him, always on him, not even blinking.

Levi opened his mouth. After some deliberation, he closed it and smirked easily.

Egret stepped forward. “As you can see, Mister Smith,” she said without taking her eyes off Levi, “our knockoff version isn't nearly as well behaved-”

He spat in her face.

The armed guard tackled him at once, though Levi made no other move but a breathy laugh and a wink at Erwin as they dropped him to his front, shoved a gag in his mouth, and pressed his face to the ground. Erwin moved to free him so quickly he was sure it had been instinctual. His head snapped back as three others yanked him back. They muttered nonsense like “It's dangerous” and “It's for your own safety.”

Egret wiped her face and sighed. “I wouldn't be too hard on your man when he comes back,” she said to Erwin. “Imagine having to see variations of this dog every night for months. Shit, I wouldn't have told you either.”

“I imagine,” Erwin said with a rapidly draining calm, “he might be a bit more cooperative in exchange for basic human dignity.”

She took her eyes off Levi and gestured to the scene. “This? Even this? It's a hundred times as much as he once offered us.” At Erwin's silent confusion, she gave Erwin such a look of pity that it sickened him. “Your man really did tell you nothing. Well, doesn't matter now.”

She crouched and took out a syringe. The cap twisted open. She rucked up the sleeve of his trapped arm.

“Wait,” Erwin said, and rid himself of his captors, likely convinced that this Levi – Dragunov, Erwin thought belatedly, was Levi's name for him – was no danger to him.

Egret waved the syringe innocently. “Can't pronounce the name of this to save my life, but it'll bring him back. I'd let you run it by your lab techies but we're kinda cutting it close.”

Erwin trapped the wrist that held it. “You'll forgive me if I prefer you not humiliate him further.”

“You got another idea?”

“Raise him up.”

Egret rolled her eyes. “It's easier when he's-”

“Raise him. And ungag him.”

“We can't-”

“Afraid he'll say something that doesn't fit neatly into your narrative?” he asked, and even as he said the words, he knew from the set of her jaw that he was right. She deliberated inwardly as she studied him, and Erwin prayed her organization's inexplicable desire to impress him after having violated their privacy and autonomy in more ways than Erwin thought possible would convince her to do him this small favor.

“Raise him to his knees-” Egret started.

“Feet.”

“Fine,” Egret said, “But the gag stays.”

Erwin could tell he wouldn't be able to bargain for more. They hauled him to his feet, as promised, and if Dragunov was anything like Levi, he could have killed three of them before he left his knees, another four as he steadied on his feet, and the rest before the first seven had fallen.

Dragunov didn't look at him. He turned away, hair swinging, and when someone's hand in his hair urged him forward, he shut his eyes tight.

Erwin stepped closer, and he could almost hear Egret clenching her teeth. Seven men held the man in place, and as many more surrounded them, guns drawn. Erwin knew it was for show. They wouldn't dare hurt Levi, no matter who moved his limbs. Not if they wanted Erwin's cooperation. Not if they themselves wanted to live.

“We could do it Egret's way,” Erwin said to the man, his mind throttling his eyes and his ears and his heart to make it see that this wasn't Levi, this man was nothing like him if what Egret said was true, and yet he shuddered like Levi at a cold breeze, flinched and swallowed thickly like Levi when he knew he was filthy. Dragunov's eyes remained shut.

Erwin licked his lips, tasting blood and dust. “I have another that might be less... invasive. You'll need to open your eyes.”

After a few seconds, he did.He watched his feet as Erwin shucked off his coat and draped it over his left arm. His gaze traveled up Erwin's figure until itstoppedon his right arm as Erwin folded back the sleeve. His eyes widened. Egret's eyes, too, as they darted between the two.

City lights ignited his coal eyes. His shoulders fell. His breathing quickened. His head drooped, but his eyes remained on his arm, and Erwin wondered what it meant that this alone affected him so, that he had to have run a knife across it before for the same result.

But Dragunov had done the same. He'd run his nail over his arm in The Ring as if to check if it bled, to see that it was real, or whole, or flesh, apparently at the cost of cutting short his time on Erwin's side. Egret's boss – Egret's Erwin Smith – must have some sort of prosthetic, or no arm at all. Dragunov had wanted to make sure he had been speaking to the right Erwin.

Dragnuov, like Levi, was keeping secrets.

The man himself began to waver on his feet. Erwin's skin crawled at having to watch him in this state, but he wagered it was better than the shock of being yanked across whatever it was that divided Egret's world from their own. Still, it was too slow. Dragunov fell to knees much too slowly.

Erwin knelt before him. He reached out with his hand just as slowly, watching for a flinch, a flick of the brow, anything at all that belied discomfort, anything, and Erwin would draw away. Dragunov only blinked as Erwin's fingers skirted paper-light over his cheek and his jaw, as he stared at Erwin as if hypnotized until Erwin's thumb brushed past the barbells on his nape and he collapsed in his arms.

Erwin's hands flew to his gag, but he wasn't fast enough. Levi stirred, and Erwin knew it was Levi because he looked like he was ready to personally sever every hand that still touched him as he rose.

“Stand back,” Erwin ordered.

“He's back," Egret told them, “MOVE-”

Levi twisted and kicked two guards at once. The others jumped away as the two were thrown, as Levi reached for a knife that wasn't there, then for another, and another still. Erwin took the first one he found in the satchel, pushed one into his hand and Levi slashed at the gag so violently that a cut bloomed on his chin.

Erwin stood as he rounded on Egret.

“Levi,” Erwin called, and Levi stopped just short of her, close enough that her nervous laugh troubled his hair.

“Business adjourned,” Egret said, watching the knife Levi still gripped. “Well, almost.” Levi watched her hand slip into her jacket and hold something out. He took it, a single photo. Erwin looked over his shoulder.

It was a photo of Imani Jones, their only surviving flier from the Panacea incursion. She wore civilian clothes and waved limply at the camera from her seat at a dimly lit table. No visible wounds, and she looked well-fed. Isabel sat beside her, looking somewhere off-camera.

“Picked em right out from under Intermipol's nose,” Egret said, too pleased. “The idiots think they still have them.”

Erwin knew then why she was pleased.

“Who do you want in return?” Erwin asked.

Egret laid a scandalized hand on her chest. “Why, you cruel, cynical-”

“Who the fuck do you want?” Levi whispered, and Egret must have some self-preservation left, because the smile drained, and her hand descended.

“Your girls for one of mine.”

*

“Hurry!” Moblit called through Hange's earpiece.

Hange bolted through the underground halls as smoke curled from within. They dragged their cap low, their scarf high. Their steps splashed against wet marble as they raced through sprinkler-spray past overwhelmed guards, both Survey and Intermipol, who led their coughing charges out of their holding cells.

It had taken close to an hour to calculate how best to get the smoke bombs through the vents. Moblit was a genius.

Cell A4 was locked. Hange could see it through the smoke and the small army of attendants and guards attempting to shuttle the legions of Survey soldiers, medics and technicians Intermipol had placed in temporary holding before extradition to Munich.

Hange waited behind the corner and shifted in their stolen attendant's uniform. They flagged a guard and pointed to the cell. Someone collapsed down the hallway. Another screamed. Hange almost grinned. Survey vets can put on a hell of a show.

The guard unlocked the cell and Hange rushed inside. The resident of the cell yelped at the sudden intrusion, a woman in the white shirt and slacks of a long term inmate with hair as wild as her eyes were skittish. She folded in on herself in her wheelchair, tucking her legs as far toward her chest as the casts on them allowed.

“Fire, ma'am,” Hange announced, grabbing the handles of the chair and slipping into the flow of people rushing outside before the guard turned around. They wound their way through the crowd until Hange took a sharp left into a restroom, barred the door, hopped onto a sink and pushed open the loose grating of an air vent.

The inmate squinted. “...Hange?”

Hange wheeled her over. “Push or pull?”

“Wh-what?”

“You want me to push your ass or pull it?”

“Hange, I'm so sor-”

“Push it is,” Hange said, and lifted her out of the chair. The inmate squawked at being picked up and handled so abruptly, but Hange didn't slow. They called directions ahead of the inmate. Left. Right. Right. Left. No, _left_.

They emerged on a rooftop. Hange grunted as they hauled her on their back and made their way down stepladders and fire escapes until they could hop safely down. The car was idling on the other side of the broad lawn. Hange swore and tried to look as much as possible like it was perfectly normal for an attendant to carry an inmate in their arms into an unmarked car.

“Hey!” someone called behind them.

“Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck,” Hange chanted under their breath. Maybe in all the noise and confusion and the waxy evening streetlamps, it was perfectly normal that Hange wouldn't hear or see him.

“He's the guard from before,” the inmate whispered, shaking. “And he's got friends.”

Hange broke into a run. More shouting. Louder. Closer. The car turned onto the sidewalk and then the lawn as it blocked Hange from their pursuers. The back passenger door flung open.

Shots glanced off the car door and shattered the driver side mirror. The car didn't stop as Hange flung the inmate inside and followed. Moblit stepped with all his weight on the gas as they rounded the block and sped off.

Hange snapped the seat belt on the dazed inmate and poked their head forward.

“Moblit, what's the fastest way to – you're bleeding.”

“No'mnot,” he struggled.

“Stop somewhere. Stop the car.”

“They're on us,” Moblit said. A car wearing Intermipol's black and white stripes screeched after them from two blocks away. Fire trucks wailed in front of them. “Sides, went through the car door, no'sobad. We can get to a cache and get another car-”

“Intermipol's raiding them too. _Stop the car_.”

“Then,” he swallowed thickly, “then one of the clande-clandestine ones downtown. Mirror's broke. Can't get off the island without a t-tunnel or bridge. If it's not Intermipol it's the NYPD,” he slurred. He was too pale. Hange slipped into the front passenger seat, snapped off his seat belt, steadied the wheel, and pulled him into the backseat as they slipped into the driver's.

“You,” Hange said, pointing backwards at the inmate as she helped Moblit to his seat. “Med kit's in the back. If he blacks out, I'm pulling out your pearly whites.”

“Hange!” Moblit complained weakly.

“Then your nails,” Hange added as they competed with a taxi. “Not the kinda bust you were expecting, huh, Beckert?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had no idea I'd be able to pull a chapter title double entendre like this when I named her


	16. World Premier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [LDR - Body Electric](https://youtu.be/P1m71K-AQ7g)  
> ♫ [Deus Ex: HR - Icarus Theme](https://youtu.be/rWc6DwaB-EM)
> 
>  
> 
> [Cover](http://35grams.tumblr.com/post/138718490624)

 

 

The Walls were a deep blue this late at night. The wind curled into Erwin's coat. It whipped it against the parapet. He couldn't feel his nose in the chill, couldn't feel his ears.

There was movement behind him. Anyone else might not have caught it. They might not have known how to hear it. Erwin didn't turn when he spoke.

“Morning, captain.”

“Hardly.”

He didn't say anything else.

It wasn't the first time Erwin found his way here in the middle of the night. It wasn't the first time the captain found him here in the middle of the night.

The Walls were a deep blue. They swallowed the horizon.

Erwin shook his head and headed back.

“Just a dream.”

 

*

 

Glass crunched under his boots as Erwin entered his apartment. It had clearly been broken into more times than Erwin cared to guess. He imagined all the hidden firearms and false documents tucked into locked safes and loose floorboards were gone. Confiscated.

There were no cameras, no bugs. Erwin knew because he had made sure of it years before when he requested that Mike install such such an extensive anti-surveillance net in and around the property that it was a wonder electronics didn't combust within ten meters of the front door.

No one guarded the door or stood watch outside. The inside, too, was empty. Erwin had been prepared to personally relieve any nearby Intermipol agents of their duties, but it seemed simply abandoning the place and paying off the landlord to look the other way had been enough to delay Intermipol's suspicions. Or maybe they didn't have as many agents to go around as they liked the world to believe.

Erwin stayed away from the windows and approached a closet. Everything that had been in it had been thrown, spilled and scattered about. Before he stepped inside, he heard a knock. Two raps on the front door, sharp. Low on the door, near the knob. Then another pair, louder. Erwin knocked twice in return against the closet door.

Levi opened the door and shut it behind him. “Clear,” he reported. He didn't look Erwin in the eye.

Erwin positioned Levi in the best spot to keep an eye on all outgoing windows and doors. He didn't look at him either. They hadn't spoken beyond one-word orders and affirmatives on the ride to the apartment.

Erwin switched on the hanging bulb in the closet and shut the door behind him. He felt underneath the shelves and stomached the feeling of dust and grime slipping into the scrapes carved across both his hands. He kept searching until he found the slight depression.

He pushed in and lifted the shelves out of the way of a seemingly blank wall. A spike of pain flooded his right arm that surged from his shoulder to the tips of his fingers. He pushed the shelves out of the way with only his left with a grunt and rested his forehead against the wall. He gripped his sleeve. For a moment, he was sure it was empty.

Pushing himself upright, he looked down to position his feet just so against the slats of hardwood flooring before straightening and looking forward. For a moment, he only stood. Firetrucks blared distantly.

Then, a faint click. A veil of light poured into his eyes as the hidden retina scanner finished its work with another click. The wall split open, and the light-curving lens field – invisibility field, Hange had called it despite Mike's cringing at the word – switched off.

It had once been a joke. _What if,_ Mike had said _, our command center, an instant, direct line to our deepest agents, was embedded in your publicly listed and unguarded apartment three blocks from a police precinct and four from an Intermipol recruitment_ _station_ _?_

Mike had looked as if he regretted saying it before it hadentirely left his mouth. It was ridiculous on its face. The risks were so great and so numerous they were not even worth listing. And yet, it had never been found. Even the apartment's anti-surveillance field was no cause for suspicion. They were commercially available. Every third family in the country used one. It would have been more odd if Erwin hadn't had it installed.

They had also scattered decoy consoles around the city with far more airtight security. All unlisted. All hidden deep underground. Every inch of them guarded. Intermipol raided five of the six in the past month alone. The sixth was raided two months prior.

Even Levi, who himself had broken in without tripping a single silent alarm, hadn't had the first idea where the console was.

Erwin established contact with the network. Every agent was in position. His contact intimated that it wouldn't last through the night. Intermipol was not making a show of investigating anymore. Another few hours, and the first wave of deep cover agents were in serious danger of exposure. They were nearly out of time.

He slipped the folder out of his coat. It was battered and dusty and dog-eared from the ride and the crash, but the pages were whole. He fed them into the system to scan and sent the encryption cipher to his contact.

Erwin ordered his contact to include a kill switch in case the codes triggered anything unsavory, but privately, he doubted it. Egret wouldn't kidnap Isabel and Jones if she didn't sincerely want Beckert. And if they wanted Beckert, they wanted Erwin. If they wanted him, the Survey Corps had to live.

She confirmed it on the roof. Beckert had been one of theirs. Foley too, until they realized too late that he was an Intermipol mole. Funny. An agent of Intermipol pretending to be an agent of Egret's pretending to be a member of the Survey Corps.

Would that he had all the time in the world to corroborate anything Egret had said. But they could spare no more than an hour. An hour until Pixis' protection ended. An hour until the premier.

Erwin had caught up on the week's news of the past week on their way to the apartment, digesting as much as he could from the console on the back of the taxi driver's seat. The protests had ended. Intermipol was as large a presence in the city, and perhaps all cities stateside, as local police. They crawled forums and social networks and blacked out the first signs of agitation, the originators tracked down with the full force of federal governments and their partnerships with Intermipol. Physical protests didn't fare better. Never in his life did Erwin remember passing so many striped Intermipol humvees rumbling up and down Manhattan streets.

After some deliberation, he also sent the damning audio from Egret that implicated the three Intermipol board chairs, and the sketch he made in The Ring of the crossed wings. He tried to forget what happened immediately after that vision. None of it mattered now.

 

Once their business concluded, Erwin closed up and stepped out. Levi stood in his periphery. Levi gestured to his own phone. Erwin's had been lost in the crash.

“Can't get a read on Hange.”

Erwin didn't answer.

Levi went on. “Dunno why they'd – do you think Mike left them a message too?”

Erwin had shown him the note in the car. The rings stayed in his pocket. It was an officer's ring. Levi wouldn't need it anymore.

“Levi-”

“Must have. That or Intermipol's already moved Beck and we haven't heard from Hange so-”

Erwin doesn't look at him. “JFK. One hour.”

Levi blinked. Erwin bent to pick up a bent box of matches from the mess around the closet and went into the kitchen for a pot. Levi followed.

“I've arranged your flight to Johannesburg. Cache 54R will have your papers, mask and false fingerprints. You will be the captain to division chief Kotze's third division special reconnaissance-”

“Recon. Third-tier recon.”

Erwin stopped his rummaging for a moment, but he showed nothing on his face. There was nothing to show.

“Erwin-”

“Commander.”

“What?”

Erwin crumpled the folder and threw it in the metal pot. “I shouldn't have allowed our association to blind me to the needs of the Survey Corps. The fact is,” he said as he lit a match and fed the codes to the flame, “your abilities are sorely needed elsewhere. I shouldn't have prioritized my safety over anyone else's.”

“You're the head of this operation. If anyone-”

“Even so. Have a safe flight, captain.”

Levi didn't move. “And Hange? Beckert? Mike and Nanaba? What about the-”

“From now on, your concerns begin and end with the safety of your squad and the orders of chief Kotze, do I make myself clear?”

“And Egret? And...and-”

“You will be accompanied by a Survey medic. If pulling on the barbells doesn't work as a deterrent in the event of an involuntary switch, they have been instructed to sedate you. I trust you understand why.”

Erwin threw on his coat. The flames licked at the last of their meal. As Erwin strode to the door, Levi spoke again.

“Then they told you,” he said, eyes a fraction too wide. “Who he is. Dragunov. What he's done-”

“No,” Erwin said. “It's your secret to keep. I suppose while it would be more efficient to know how it is you communicate with Egret's employer, it seems it's been a great deal easier to hear it from her than from you.”

Egret had dragged them out of a combat zone and spilled everything, told him almost too much for Erwin to digest in one night. She gave him everything. He and Levi were in the same safe house for seven straight days. In any other situation, his behavior would be subject to court martial. If this was any other time. If he were any other man.

Given the circumstances, this was the only feasible alternative. Besides, Levi had wanted a relocation in The Ring. Erwin was only keeping a promise.

He came to the door.

“Wait,” Levi said.

Erwin twisted the knob.

Levi's hands shot from behind to shut it. He shoved himself between Erwin and the door. Now, he looked at him, and this close, Erwin was forced to meet his eye.

Levi visibly schooled calm into his lowered voice. “You know I would do anything.”

Whatever Levi saw in Erwin's face – or didn't see – at his admission agitated him. He pushed himself into Erwin's space.

“Erwin, I'd slit my own throat.”

Erwin set his jaw. “I know,” he whispered. It didn't help his argument, because Erwin knew it was true. Levi would do all those things and more. He would leap from towers without a harness if Erwin ordered it, would ride into a titan nest if Erwin even suggested it. But he wouldn't tell Erwin the truth.

Erwin gripped the doorknob. Levi grabbed his wrist tighter. His face twisted into something so strained, his eyes so wide and pained that Erwin nearly relented. He nearly forgave.

“You'd slit your own throat.”

“Yeah,” Levi said immediately. “Yeah, I would. If you ordered it, I would.”

If he ordered it, he would. If Erwin ordered it. Levi's hand tightened on his when Erwin said, “I won't order you to tell me.”

Levi exhaled sharply through his nose. “Why?”

Erwin took his hand from the knob. Levi's hand trailed out of its grip on his wrist.

“For the same reason I never gave you an official position within the Corps. Never ordered you to overhaul our security division or assist me in developing a historic campaign. I never had to.”

Levi clenched his fists, and hovered as if he wanted at once to shove past or shove closer.

“Do you think I'm so cruel,” Erwin said, “that I would hold against you something entirely out of your control?”

“Don't make this about you.”

“Would you rather I ordered you?”

“Yes.”

And Erwin knew he should leave it, knew he should stop, but now he needed to know.

“If I ordered it, would you kill a Survey agent? A coworker? A friend?”

“Yes.”

“Would you kill me?”

Levi's face slackened. It wasn't shock, not really. It was nothing. A purge.

Before Erwin could make any more sense of it, Levi's face broke into a smile, and then a soft, silent laugh. And then, into something else entirely. Something wild.

“Levi-”

Levi shoved him. Hard. Erwin might have shattered the mirror that he was sure hung to the right of the front door. Levi looked about as dazed as Erwin felt. He smirked easily at nothing in particular. The last time Erwin had seen that expression, Levi had been restrained and gagged.

But it wasn't Dragunov. It couldn't be. Dragunov could have never looked at him like that.

“Yeah,” Levi drawled. Slow. Easy. He took his time. “I would. And I'd be good. I've had so much practice. I'd be so so good.”

Erwin pulled himself off the wall. He made no sharp movements, but that might not have mattered. When Levi's eyes weren't swimming lazily here and there, they passed through Erwin. Even when he looked him in the eye, he looked past him.

“Months, I wanted that order. I would've been so good.” He began to pace toward Erwin. “Sometimes it was three times a night. One time, it was five. You ever see a head split open five times in one night? Ever see the wind carry the spray? It's so clean. I'd be so, so good to you.”

Erwin's hands rested uselessly at his side, long since numb. Blood roared in his ears.

Levi's brows rose innocently. “Well? Oh. Oh, doesn't have to be a gun. Dagger, switch-knife, box cutter, I've done it all,” Levi said, watching him. “It's just so messy,” Levi scowled. “I mean, if you wanted to put on a show, sure, I guess. Just pegged you for a guy who likes discretion.”

“Levi-”

“Правильно, too flashy,” he said. A bead of blood welledon his bottom lip. The wind must have lashed them while Dragunov had waited for the shot. He popped it between his teeth before listing, “Well, I poisoned you twice, ran you over twelve, maybe thirteen times, gutted you, throttled you, threw you off a balcony or ten-”

Erwin opened his leaden jaw to speak, but nothing came.

Levi stopped and looked at Erwin. He squinted as if he was as far away in miles as he was in feet. His eyes shined. “I've seen the inside of your skull more often than your face. I've-”

“Levi-”

“I've washed my hands of your blood more than anything else, more than my own, more than any dirt or grime and I can't...I can't-”

“Please-”

“-look at you without seeing all the ways – seven, now – all the ways I could kill you and all the ways I'd hide your body and escape and sometimes,” he said with a choked laugh, “sometimes I think I got Foley before he could get off a second shot is so no one gets to kill you but me.” His jaw trembled. “So yeah, I'd kill you. And I'd be good at it. I'd be so, _so_ good.” He blinked rapidly and swept back his damp hair. His shoulders slumped.

“Go, I guess. Send someone to arrest me. Thought I saw rope near the closet, won't have me going nowhere.” He turned and disappeared into the kitchen.

Erwin watched him go. His mouth hung open. He couldn't think, couldn't speak. His leaden feet steered him into the kitchen. Levi leaned over a counter with his head in his hands, chest heaving. He shook his head when Erwin's boots echoed on the hardwood.

He shot a glance behind him with eyes rimmed red and frowned at Erwin's empty hands. “It was right there,” he said thickly. He pushed off and turned to the closet “Fine, I'll get it-”

Erwin stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. Levi tensed immediately. “Ten, now,” he said.

“Why,” Erwin whispered, because he didn't trust his voice above one. “why didn't you tell me?”

He flinched when Erwin's other hand found his shoulders, too. He was trembling. “Yeah. I'd have j-just told you I-”

“It's not you,” Erwin said, tempering the swell of desperation in his chest from rising into his voice. “You keep saying _I_ as if it was you but it was never you. It was the other- it was Dragunov. All the versions of him, all the-”

“Get the rope.”

“Levi-”

Levi shifted out of his reach. Erwin held him in place, knowing Levi could throw him anytime he wanted.

“Please look at me.”

Levi stared obstinately ahead. His breath came in harsh rasps.

Erwin shook his head. The chains in The Ring. The reluctance to sleep in one room. He had been willfully blind. “I should have known.”

“Don't.”

“I should've seen it-”

Levi wrenched himself free and stalked away. He returned a moment later and shoved the bundle at his chest. Erwin set it aside as Levi dropped into a chair. He stared ahead vacantly, waiting.

“Levi-”

Levi only stared ahead.

All this time. All these weeks, these months. Every night. He'd been dreaming this every last wretched night.

Erwin tread on the remains of an upturned spider plant. He knelt by his feet.

“Until you understand,” Erwin said, and Levi shut his eyes, “that this isn't your fault, I won't leave this room.”

Levi shook his head, slowly at first and then enough for his hair to swing and stick to the cold sweat on his face. He rose and paced by the counter until Erwin blocked his way.

“I can't be like you,” Levi said, “I can't pretend this is normal, that I'm normal, that I-”

“I'll be the first to tell you it isn't,” Erwin said, and this time, Levi didn't flinch as sharply when Erwin lay his hands on his shoulders and steadying the tremor that rocked him on his feet. “And I'll also be the first to tell you that you. Had. No. Control,” and as Levi shook his head, Erwin cradled his jaw and said more firmly, “None. I can't promise they aren't real or…or that they don't matter. They could be, and they might. But I promise you,” he said with a rising tremor in his voice, “I would have never – _never –_ held this against you. Not then. Not now, or ever.”

Levi said nothing.

“And if it were the other way around,” Erwin admitted as he struggled to contain the tremor in his own hands, “I would've taken it to my grave like a coward. I would.”

Levi said nothing.

“It wasn't you. I mean it. I mean it, Levi,” Erwin said. “You have to believe me.” Erwin pulled him into his arms. “I'm so sorry,” he whispered into his hair. He kissed his hair, the crown of his head, his temple, breathed in copper and salt and alleyway dust. “Прости меня.”

Levi's hands curled in his coat as if to throw him off. Erwin would have let him.

“Fourteen, now,” Levi said into his chest. He didn't throw him off. By slow, aching degrees, Erwin felt the wires in him that strung each muscle taut begin to loosen, begin to fray.

Erwin's right arm seized. Levi must have felt the twitch on his back, the hitch in Erwin's chest. He pulled away just enough to pull Erwin's arm between them. Erwin set his jaw. Every point of contact stung like nails scraping exposed nerves.

“Never did figure what's up with the arm...” Levi's thumb skirted over his wrist. He looked up at Erwin's sharp breath. “Does it-”

Erwin shook his head. Levi shot him an unconvinced look and let it fall. Every inch of it that Levi had touched wailed like a fresh burn. It had never felt this way before.

“You think they'll give a shit about that,” Levi said, a question hollowed into a statement. He leaned the slightest bit into Erwin's left hand, still framing his face, still running his thumb along his jaw and troubling the faint hairs on his cheek.

“Who-”

“It's gonna change you. Reintegration. The things we've seen from former inmates...all the memory loss and all the neuroses and psychoses – it's nothing,” he said. Something impenetrable, unreadable, clouded his eyes. He grabbed Erwin's wrist, but he didn't pull him away. “Nothing compared to what they'll do to you.”

“Levi-”

“They'll have you singin' God Bless Intermipol by the time they're through. They'll have you renounce the film, renounce the Survey Corps. You're giving them the only thing that could possibly help them survive the film-”

“So that the world can see what they do with it. With me.”

Levi laughed hollowly. “Never needed me to kill you. You do just fine on your own.”

With that, every point of contact between Levi and himself was a point of shame. He didn't flatter himself in assuming Levi felt anything but camaraderie for him, and yet something about how Erwin crowded him, how Levi touched him, how Erwin touched him, became deeply unfair.

Erwin tried to pull away. Levi didn't let him.

“Fifteen, now.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Because I know I'll let you go.”

“No,” Erwin said, brows drawn as he understood what Levi implied. “This is my decision to make. You don't bear any res-”

“I could stop you. Easily.”

“And I would order you to stand aside.”

Levi's grip tightened just so on Erwin's left hand. “You won't have to,” he said, and let his own hand fall. He trailed another down a torn seam on Erwin's coat. Erwin let his own fall from Levi's jaw.

Erwin caught himself watching the swell of his bitten-pink lips. Levi caught him, too.

Erwin cleared his throat. “Forty minutes,” he said. “I should go. Your flight-”

“I'll go-”

“It's not that,” Erwin said. “Your position is for show. Now that I'm convinced your reticence wasn't due to-”

“Playing for the other team?”

Erwin shifted. “Now that I'm sure, I can brief you.”

Erwin quickly relayed a security clearance code for Levi to recite to chief Kotze, whom Erwin met during the global survey to finalize the decision to relocate the Survey Corps headquarters should their current one be compromised. It was a precaution Erwin hoped they'd never need. They needed it now.

Erwin reached for the ring in his coat. Without thinking, he took Levi's hand and slid it on. “Mike's contact slipped our new IDs in with that note. Actually-” He wrested his own from his finger and dropped it in Levi's palm. “I doubt they'll let me have this. Keep it safe.”

He was about to leave – sincerely – but Levi had gone so still that Erwin began to bare his right arm.

“Levi? Are you-”

“It's me, I'm here,” he said. He looked up at Erwin then with a shadow of a smile and raised his hand. Erwin had slipped it on his ring finger.

“Oh – um...it can...it can go on any, uh-”

Levi watched him flounder, watched as piercingly as he would a target. He stalked toward him with a confidence that had before been swallowed whole by his confession. He moved until Erwin needed to look straight down to meet his eye, until Levi needed to crane his neck at an obscene angle to meet his.

Levi spun the band on his finger with his thumb. He slipped Erwin's ring back on his hand, not on his middle where it sat before, but on his own ring finger. Erwin opened his mouth to say – he didn't know what, really – but Levi was already pulling it off. “Just wanted to see how it looked,” he said as if to himself, before giving a wry huff of a laugh. “We did everything backwards,” he said with a voice Erwin didn't recognize. A little knowing. A little sad.

“What do you mean?” Erwin asked as if he had no idea.

“Doesn't matter. Unless you get all touchy with just anyone who tells you they've been dreaming of killing you for-”

“No,” Erwin said too-quickly. “I mean-”

“So it is just me.”

“If I made you uncomfortable-”

“No. And I wouldn't do this shit for anyone else either, you know. This honesty shit. If it were anyone else, I'd have kept it to myself.”

Erwin didn't answer immediately, so Levi went on.

“Just wondering if it goes both ways,” Levi said, then, in a voice that sounded at once harsh and rehearsed, “I was so sure you were hallucinating in The Ring. When you drew those wings.”

“I was.”

“Yeah. And then you weren't. Just wondering if you pulled out before or after you felt me up.”

Erwin stepped back. “I – that was-”

Levi stepped forward. “Never said I objected.”

Erwin swallowed. “I didn't mean-”

“Or we could keep pretending you were out of it,” Levi lowered his eyes to his chest. “Might as well.”

Erwin's thoughts weren't agreeing with his ears. He couldn't let himself believe it.

“In any case,” Erwin hedged, “it's too late.”

“Thought it'd make you braver. Eleventh hour and all.”

“I've never been more afraid.”

“Intermipol-”

“I didn't mean Intermipol.”

Levi reached up and pressed his lips to Erwin's jaw.

“Am I so much worse than Intermipol?” Levi whispered against him.

“Yes,” Erwin said, and kissed the gentle slope of his forehead, kissed away the tension between his brows. He didn't notice Levi's hands curling in his collar, didn't notice one hand rising to stroke his nape, didn't anticipate the gasp that wrenched his mouth open, nor the lips that met his own.

“This isn't fair to you,” Erwin said against him. He couldn't stay. He couldn't ask Levi to follow. He courted an end pretending to be a beginning.

Levi kissed slowly. For a long moment, he only dragged his lips across Erwin's and sighed into his mouth. He slipped under the collar of Erwin's coat and raked his nails across his nape. “So be unfair,” Levi said into Erwin's sigh, and nipped at his bottom lip. Erwin's arm burned.

An insistent buzz started from Levi's pocket. Levi licked at Erwin's lip and glanced at the message. His face darkened.

“Who-” Erwin started.

“Moblit,” he said, blinking the daze from his eyes. “Says Hange's AWOL.”

“How?”

“Hold on...says E.B. pissed them off-”

“Elise Beckert.”

“-and now they're who the fuck knows where,” Levi editorialized. He ran his hand down his face. “Hange-”

“Then Hange has Beckert…that makes things difficult. Impossible to leave the country with Beckert, but with Nanaba indisposed, leadership falls to them and it'd be much easier to have Hange in Johannesburg to-”

“Quit burying the lede.”

“I know where Hange is.”

Erwin took a step toward the door and stopped. “There's one last thing I need to ask of you.”

 

*

 

The museum was packed. Erwin slipped through the crowd until he was met with the searing blue of the Hayden Planetarium through the glass of the museum walls. He entered through the employee entrance and ducked into a windowless fire stairway that rose and opened into its heart.

The door creaked as it opened. It was past operating hours. The hall was deserted. The shaft of light from the stairwell poured into the planetarium. There was a dark shape in one of the back seats.

Erwin moved to the back and sat in the seat beside them. Neither spoke.

Hange pulled their legs up to their chest. “Saved me the trouble.”

“Mm,” Erwin agreed.

Moblit's text had been a decoy. There was no way to tell how secure the lines were. Hange knew not only that Erwin knew that Hange would have never walked out like that, but that Erwin knew where to go if they were ever sincerely upset. They only ever go here.

Hange pushed a note into his hands and illuminated it with their phone when Erwin unfolded it. Erwin gave them Mike's other note as he read Hange's. One line stood out.

_If Erwin plans to give himself in, invoke our contract. I'm doing it now, in writing. I should have realized sooner._

Erwin dropped Hange's ring into their outstretched palm as they folded the note Mike had left Erwin.

“Secure?” Erwin asked, referring to the room.

“Yep,” Hange said. “Wrong finger, gone finger,” they snorted.

“I didn't put that to a test yet,” Erwin said, “but I imagine he's serious.”

“Worse than radicals...” Hange hummed. “So I guess it's settled. Those two are Intermipol.”

“Just Foley.”

Hange blinked. “Might wanna fill me in there, chief.”

Erwin thought of Egret, of everything she had said. “It's a long story.”

“I've got time.”

“I don't,” Erwin said. He watched the zodiac animations playing idly on the domed ceiling. Capricorn passed over his head.

“Yeah. Got word from deep cover. Looks like I have ten minutes to convince you.”

“There's no convincing to do. If you and Mike both forbid it, then I have no choice.”

“Right. Like this thing is legally binding in any way. Shit, we just shook hands on it one day.”

“I trust a sincere promise over a legal document a thousand times over.”

“So you'll just…not give yourself up if Mike and I wag our fingers?”

Erwin sighed. Capricorn was long gone. “I don't know. I'd like to think I keep my promises.”

Hange scratched their head. “That stupid contract wasn't made for things like this, Erwin, nothing this big. We did it so we could bully you to maybe sleep every three days.”

“And you,” Erwin smiled. He and Mike had done their fair share of bullying Hange to do the same. Mike had never been on the receiving end, however. He was the more well adjusted of the three by miles.

Hange snorted. “Yeah.”

“Besides. If you two hadn't sent me on that trip last year, we would have never met Levi.”

“Still haven't told me exactly how it is you met him.”

“...Long story,” Erwin said. Hange punched him. His arm didn't burn. They sat in companionable silence for a moment, maybe two. There was no clock nearby, and they didn't bother to check Hange's phone for the time. They'll know when it starts. They'll know exactly.

“Will you do it?” Erwin asked.

Hange didn't answer for a time. They sighed. “I dreamed of Kronos.”

Erwin turned sharply. “You mean, you saw his name…?”

“No. It wasn't some name written somewhere or whispered about. It was real,” they said. They turned to him. “And it sabotaged you. Got you killed.”

Erwin opened his mouth to speak, but Hange interrupted.

“Way I see it, we're lookin' at two scenarios. Either these visions are Intermipol's doing and taking it down will stop them, or this is something Intermipol has nothing to do with. Something worse than Intermipol. Worse than radicals and titans. If you give yourself over, Intermipol _might_ fall faster. They have four-fifths of our force locked up at least. Nothing like staging a rebellion from the inside. Assuming that's your plan.”

Erwin didn't correct them.

“But it would separate us even more. Give this Kronos or whatever or whoever is behind the dreams one fantastic opening.”

“You called Kronos 'it'.”

“Yeah. Can't say it's human. Not from what I've seen.” At Erwin's look, they smiled tightly and said, “Long story.”

“I believe it.”

Hange crossed their arms and set their jaw. The decision was theirs, and it was unfair. He was making a habit of being unfair. Erwin squeezed their shoulder. Hange shrugged it off, only to yank at his coat lapels and pull him into an embrace. “Erwin, I can't-”

The planetarium ceiling brightened. A pair of blue wings flooded the ceiling and a low hum washed over the hall. The ceiling faded to black. His face appeared, then, and then his voice thundered through the planetarium speakers, and through speakers the world over.

 _“_ _My name is Erwin Smith, president and commander of The Survey Corps._ _I_ _bring you an urgent announcement.”_

 

*

 

Levi watched the monitor on the seat in front of the man seated next to him as the plane rose from the runway. The man cycled through each set of subtitles, fifteen for each of South Africa's official languages.

“- _nce of titans and the amoral actions of the International Military_ -”

“- _kan nie toelaat dat hulle om voort te gaan_ -”

“- _kubalulekile ukuthi siqonda_ -”

The man rummaged through his carry on bag and pulled out his phone. Levi couldn't make out what the man was saying, much less which language he spoke, but he didn't miss the conspiratorial tone, the darting eyes, even the occasional ' _titan_ ' whispered in English.

Levi straightened and peered over the seat in front of him to watch the rest of the passengers. A chorus of gasps rippled as the film playing on the back of each seat cut to expedition footage. Everyone in it but Erwin was masked to avoid implicating anyone but him – but Levi knew his own silhouette. He watched himself slay an eight-footer. It must be an old shot. He hadn't seen a titan under ten in months.

The pilot ordered calm over the intercom, but the passengers weren't rowdy, weren't even loud. Once the seat-belt sign flickered off, they rose and chattered in hushed groups, converging and sharing, from what Levi could overhear, stories of parents, sons, daughters, cousins, cousins of cousins, friends or coworkers who sounded just like what this Erwin Smith was describing.

“- _they may either_ _desperately_ _attempt_ _to convince you of what they've seen or lie about the nature of their trauma_ -”

“- _until one morning, one afternoon, one evening,” Erwin's voice carried over the place, “a person comes to your door and tells you he can help_ -”

“- _he tells you the International Military Police can help_ -”

The monitors flickered off mid-sentence. A roar rose, and flight attendants attempted to restore calm with little passion – a few, Levi saw, did not even move. They understood, too. They too, had lost family to titans and Intermipol in equal measure.

The pilot urged calm again through the intercom, telling the passengers the order to shut them off came from below and the decision was “entirely out of his hands”. Another outraged swell of protests rippled through the plane. Passengers began to bully their way into the cockpit. Soon, the decision was entirely in their hands.

*

Egret popped a roasted peanut in her mouth. She turned to a gaping couple to her right.

“Neat, right?” she said to them in between chewing another mouthful. “Times Square's bigger than I thought.”

They ignored her, instead staring intently at dozens of screens, marquees and billboards painted black but for a man speaking of things they had feared to whisper in the privacy of their own homes. Not a soul moved or spoke in the square.

 

*

 

His fork and knife clicked against his plate. There were only four others in the small diner. Mike knew they weren't trouble from a mile away, but he breathed in every few minutes anyway. He was wrong once. He will never be wrong again.

Propping his head up in one hand to feign boredom, he gazed out of the window at his target as diner chatter hovered over the noise of a football match playing on the corner monitors. He was unassuming, a man in a crowd, painfully plain. But so was Nick Foley. So was Elise Beckert.

The smell of him was so like theirs he'd nearly thought Foley himself had risen from the grave, though they weren't alike at all. Where Foley was wiry and nervous, this man swayed on his feet and laughed from the belly. In just months, scents, to Mike, had become physical forces. Sometimes they even overpowered his sight.

A group of students wearing Colorado State University sweaters passed by. The man lingered on his phone on a bench in the darkening park just in view of the diner.

He couldn't let him escape. He had to follow him. Mike thumbed at the ruddy titanium ring on his finger. Erwin would understand. Mike would make him understand. And then he would ask Erwin to forgive him.

The monitor faded to black. A few complaints rose before swiftly dying as a pair of blue wings appeared on the screen. The man at the table next to him checked the news on his laptop only to be met with another pair of wings on the front page of each site. The automated kiosks in the park darkened, too. Diner patrons and park-goers froze as they checked their buzzing or ringing or beeping phones just as the wings cut to a face. The target raised his eyebrows at his phone.

“I bring you an urgent announcement,” Mike mouthed along under his breath as the manager turns up the volume on the corner TV. “You have been lied to by the International Military Police for forty years.”

 

*

 

The sun had barely risen when Nanaba was startled awake by footsteps rushing past her room. Cell, technically, but it was a fair bit more impressive than your average jail cell. She had curtains. That was a good sign. They almost distracted her from the five inches of solid steel she had for a door.

She couldn't open the door's viewport from the inside, so she pressed her ear to the door. Everything was muffled, but she knew the difference between a normal day and one that was starting to become a bit out of the ordinary.

The window darkened. Not-window, more like. A moving screen beyond steel bars showing green, rolling hills where there was nothing but concrete. They couldn't fool her. She knew she was underground.

But now, wings appeared beyond the bars, and then a face. Not a minute later, she allowed the guards to strap her into the interrogation chair with a smile.

 

*

 

Levi stepped into OR Tambo International Airport and into an orgy of converging marches. As he rode into the city, he passed Intermipol informational and recruitment centers buckling under the strain of keeping back marchers and protesters. Some were abandoned entirely and burned. Levi pulled his bike over and contacted local Survey teams.

They had known violence would be inevitable. The Survey Corps could do nothing more than mitigate and set an example. Levi coordinated the effort to douse the flames and until the division chief herself pulled up as local Survey squad leaders stressed restraint to the rumbling crowds.

“President's not happy,” she shouted over the rising chants. She synced their comms and signaled for them to get back on their bikes and ride to division headquarters.

“It's a shame about Smith,” she said over comms.

“What?”

“You didn't see it yet, then.”

At division headquarters, Levi watched the footage with an out-of-body thrum in his bones. A civilian had caught Erwin's arrest with their phone. He watched Erwin approach a pair of Intermipol officers at a recruiting station with his palms open and up, watched the officers flick their gaze from him to the monitors and back before one grabbed a baton, another, a taser, and the third, a gun.

Levi was uninterested in stopping fires anymore.

 

*

 

It took every last atom of Mike's restraint to stop himself from slamming the door to his hotel room after what he had seen on the laptop of the man beside him. With what was left of it gone, there was nothing to stop him from taking the desk chair and flinging it against the wall. It shattered. He could almost drown out the sound of crunching bone with the ringing in his ears.

 

*

 

Nanaba's handler stopped mid-sentence at a knock on the door. It was embarrassing, really, how obviously it was staged. The handler opened the door and didn't even step outside to speak with the supposedly spontaneous messenger.

Intermipol wasn't interested in interrogations that left a scar. They weren't stupid. They knew the carrot yielded more than a stick. They knew how to endear themselves to civilians, government officials, and even the occasional young Survey agent, none of whom were ever in the service for so long that they possessed information worth hearing. Nanaba knew all their tricks. She had rehabilitated Intermipol-reintegrated agents herself for years. They'd have to try harder than this.

“-clearing out the entire wing,” the messenger said. “Some say the entire building.”

“For one person?”

“Just one.”

 

The footage of Erwin's arrest looped in her window, in every cell window, all day and all night.

 

*

 

Chief Kotze knew to give him a few minutes alone. Levi shut the laptop and crossed his arms over his chest. He could still feel his hands on his shoulders, on his neck, on his jaw.

“Spit it out,” Levi had said.

“If any of this is to mean something, anything, there can be no rescue party,” Erwin had said. He had gone on before Levi could interrupt. “Even if I am put to death. That also means stopping all other rescue attempts. I never allowed a single man's life to interfere with the life of the Survey Corps, and I won't begin now. Tell me you understand, Levi. Promise me.”

Levi promised.

He flipped through footage of the streets of New York City, of London, of Shanghai, of every city caught and streamed live courtesy of the Survey Corps. He watched their new headquarter city from a window. It boiled. The world boiled.

 

*

 

Egret burst into the room without knocking. “Hey boss- oh.”

Levi turned to her lazily from his perch on the corner of Erwin's desk. The white tulips in the opposite corner were beginning to wilt. Erwin, standing near him, nodded to her. “Report.”

“Can't tell you what to do, boss,” Egret said, “but do you think it's a good idea to have him out without a leash?”

Erwin smiled pleasantly. “You're right, of course. You can't tell me what to do.”

Egret recovered with a laugh. “Right. So – it's live. Film looks very nice, professional, good transitions, very impressive localization, they really spared no-”

Erwin interrupted. “And my counterpart?”

“Threw himself to the dogs just like he said,” Egret answered. “I mean...if we're talking about a bust, we've got a few moles in Intermipol's staff, but I'm guessing they're gonna vet anyone who comes within a mile of him within an inch of their life.”

“Will that be a problem?”

“Not if we're careful. But careful means we've got one, maybe two guys and gals with a background solid enough to let 'em squeeze into that inner circle. Boss, I don't get it. I coulda' stopped him. Easy.”

“He didn't order you to, birdface,” Levi drawled.

Egret opened her mouth to snap back before Erwin interrupted again.

“Good work. Inform all teams to standby.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, saluted lazily as she shot Levi one last unimpressed look and left the way she came. Levi left the desk and locked the door. When he turned, Erwin was writing something at his desk. His titanium hand gleamed. It had only been days since he'd parted from his shriveled flesh arm. Levi almost wanted to ask if he mourned it at all.

“Our timelines will sync in three of our weeks and five of theirs,” Erwin muttered. “It will be easier to communicate with him then.”

Levi strode past him to the windows that spanned the length of the wall. He could only bear to be near them knowing the opposite sides were tinted blacker than black. He flicked at one of the panes. “How much longer do we have to pretend I'm some rabid dog?”

Erwin's pen stopped. “Their eyes are everywhere. Even Egret, who swears up and down that she knows nothing about the sisters – I can't trust even her. I'm sorry, Levi.”

Levi already knew, and Erwin had given him this answer more than once before. Levi wanted to hear it again. Erwin didn't mind repeating.

It had to look like Erwin was forcing Levi to do his wetwork, like Levi was playing the long game and biding his time before the kill. He'd even sent the occasional fabricated update to each sister with Erwin's blessing. This way, they would be willing to be patient. They wouldn't send another to do what Levi should have done for fear of jeopardizing his work. Erwin, in turn, lays low. No public appearances. No press releases. Not yet.

“A pharma titan, an agro titan, and a tech titan all gunning for your ass for releasing a cure, and you're here playing telephone with a version of you who's somehow even more suicidal than you are,” Levi said. “And don't let me forget the glorified bathtub switcharoo machine. Anyone knows we have that thing, they'll have a noose for everyone who's ever breathed in this building.”

“Levi,” Erwin said sharply. He looked as if he had arrived at a long-coming conclusion. Levi came back to him and leaned one hip against the desk. “However you go about it,” Erwin said, “my counterpart must live.”

Levi sighed. “This core universe had better be important.”

“It is,” Erwin said a little breathlessly. “More than I ever imagined.”

 

*

 

Erwin threw one last look at Wall Maria and returned to his room. He couldn't sleep.

Erwin gave up after an hour of useless tossing. He dressed again and slipped into his 3DMG. The shoulder strap was fraying. He would need to replace it soon.

He unlocked a desk drawer and took out a notebook. He flipped through the pages, past descriptions of towers made of glass, past crude drawings of floating discs and two-wheeled black vehicles that hummed like a stadium of cicadas and growled like a pack of wolves. He came to the page with the strange alphabet and the cypher he'd developed after analyzing it for several years of these increasingly elaborate dreams. He wrote down pieces of what he had heard phonetically, then cross-referenced the letterforms against those he knew. Much of what he remembered was too fragmented to hold any real meaning, but there had been one line, one said more emphatically than any other, that he was determined to understand. The sky began to brighten.

He recorded it near other fragments he's heard tonight and over the last few years.

-e _xcessive militaristic overreach-_

_-systematic psychological manipulation of population-_

_-poorly investigated abuses by_ _CIA(?)_ _-_

Erwin shut the book as reveille blared across the Survey Corps compound. He placed it back in the drawer over another notebook. It wasn't his, but its pages with all its drawings and diagrams of fire lakes and oceans of sand from his father's hand were one of his first memories. Of him, they were his last.

As the sun rose, it illuminated the gold leaf in the King's banner as it rippled over the Survey’s wings. Erwin shut the drawer and locked it. He prepared himself for his duties and pushed aside the memory of his face on a million glowing screens. There was one line that wouldn't budge.

 

_On behalf of the Survey Corps, I declare its independence from the International Military Police._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Правильно: Right/Correct  
> -Прости меня: Forgive me.  
> -The subs in dialogue the man on the plane cycled through were English, Afrikaans, and Zulu.  
> -”A pharma titan, an agro titan, and a tech titan-” Titan in this case is a metaphor and interchangeable with tycoon – the ladies are not titans….not in the way they are in Core.  
> -Each universe runs on a different clock relative to one another until they sync completely. From fastest to slowest so far: Core, Assassin, Walls.


	17. Day One. Day Two.

 

Mike let his target lead him by several miles. He could still smell him. Something about this man's scent, about Foley's and Beckert's scent, was wrong. He couldn't shake the feeling, the instinct, that they didn't belong here. That they never belonged. Maybe not anywhere.

He rode past rural towns. He knew what gangs and mobs looked like, what they sounded like. He'd never seen so many, passed so many, in a day. They blocked town squares, spilled into highways. They blocked traffic for miles. Uniformed officers looked the other way when they weren't shuddering in their boots.

Mike watched good Samaritans with leather jackets on their backs and the devil on their arms ground titans into paste with homemade incendiaries and alleyway-traded pipe launchers.

Erwin predicted this. Not since prohibition, he'd said, will there be a greater shift in power between a furious populace and an inept police force. It's only natural, he'd said with that infuriating calm, that the world wouldn’t stop to watch the Survey Corps and Intermipol for long when there were monsters in their backyards.

Mike had nearly walked out on the plan more than once. If the government can't help quickly enough, he'd told Erwin, people will pay the first guy with a gun who says he can.

“It's already happening,” Erwin had said to him. “It's been happening in the dark for decades. Walls erected for every reason but the truest one, the ugliest. Private details. Security for those who can afford it and cheap funerals for those who can't, for those who didn't even know they needed it until they see for themselves why their mothers and their sons didn't come home that night and decide maybe it's better not to have an open casket. And before the body even cools, they get a call from a man representing the International Military Police who tells them it's in their best interests to keep their mouths shut. So yes, in those first weeks after we're grounded by glorified racketeers, people will die, and I'll be damned a hundred times over for every lost soul. It’ll take weeks for these militias to rise, weeks, even, for people to understand the enormity of this coverup. But I'd do it again, Mike, I'd do it a thousand times over so that the world can finally see who can afford the man with a gun and who cannot.”

Erwin was wrong on one count. It didn't take weeks. It took hours.

*

Hange cuffed Beckert's wrist to the headboard. Marchers converged well into D.C.'s morning hours. They nearly drowned out the broadcast echoing from street speakers, echoing past closed windows and shuttered blinds. Hange returned to the apartment's foyer and nodded at the Department of Defense agent waiting by the door.

She had appeared as if from nowhere, though Hange knew this line of work, knew that feeling could only mean they'd been followed at least since their break-in, if not long before. The woman had waited until they were well into their chopper flight to D.C. to suggest that this was the kind of favor that had a list of conditions longer than the letter of complaint Hange had filed with their university in their freshman year over the dismal quality of the school's lab equipment.

Hange shut the door to the other bedroom where Moblit was sleeping off the painkillers Hange had all but shoved down his throat. They blew out a breath.

“So,” Hange began. “Kim, was it?”

The agent stepped forward and pressed something into Hange's hands.

“Use this phone to contact us,” she said evenly. “It will only put you through to DOD agents. Do not go outside. Do not answer the door unless the meeting was arranged prior. Settle in and expect a visit from Charlie this afternoon.”

“Charlie…?”

“Just Charlie.”

Hange watched her leave. They checked the pantry – full – and found a stocked aid kit in the bathroom. They checked once more on Moblit before thinking to throw off their jacket, stained red from having to carry him to the waiting chopper back in New York. Adrenaline was thrumming its last down their arms and legs. Hange backed into the nearest wall and buckled.

They sat and examined the blood staining their wrists and flaking off their nails. Red stained their shirt, too, and their jeans. It had been a while since Hange felt blood on their skin that didn't evaporate. They hadn't missed it.

The apartment had the look of a place that was furnished according to criteria approved by at least five rounds of editing. Hotel rooms couldn't be blander.

Hange patted at the pockets of their pants and jacket. The agent and her goons confiscated everything worth taking as soon as they had clambered in. Fine. Hange remembered how to do it the old fashioned way. They wrapped the agent's phone in their jacket and shoved it in a closet while they worked.

Beckert jumped as Hange entered her room and resisted slamming the door for Moblit's sake, but only just. The wheelchair was empty. Beckert had moved herself to the bed.

“Hange, I'm sor-”

Hange raised a finger to their lips. Their eyes darted along the baseboard and then all four corners of the ceiling before examining the dresser, the only other furniture in the room aside from the bed. Hange began inspecting the drawers before giving in to a lance of impatience and just dragging the thing out of the room. Hange would never live it down to have missed a bug or a camera in such a stupid thing. When they returned, they cocked their head toward the chair. Beckert didn't need telling twice.

Hange upended the mattress before deciding that missing a bug in this lumbering thing would, too, be no less embarrassing. The bed was out.

The only thing that remained in the room then was the chair, and Beckert herself who, in a rare stroke of wisdom, decided to hold her tongue while Hange kicked at the baseboard and knocked on the walls. They then came to the lone window and found the thing screwed shut. Three wires in the baseboard, one under the windowsill, another behind the blinds. Hange crushed them in the kitchenette before returning to Beckert.

Hange sighed loudly. “Wouldn't wanna be a Cold War spook. What I wouldn't give for a nice little targeted EMP to just knock everything out, right?”

Beckert had been looking around too, but at Hange's words had darted her baleful eyes their way.

Hange sat opposite Beckert, right on the waxed hardwood.

“So, listen, I'm dying to know: Did you and Nick pick straws? Rock, paper, scissors? Or did Nick really wanna do it, really have it out for Erwin and you were just a dear old doll and let him have his moment-”

“I didn't- he didn't-” Beckert stuttered. “I swear, I- he was-”

Hange picked at the blood under their nails. “Way I see it, kid, we got a few hours. Dunno if the feds don’t know who you are or don't care or if they're on their way with a warrant right now but you've been giving me an awful lotta sorrys so I'd rather not pull teeth if I don't have to, you know?” Hange shrugged. “I don't mind the mess!” they amended as Beckert paled, “Don't get me wrong, Beckie, nothing gets done without a little mess. This is about efficiency, I'm sure you understand…” Hange trailed off. They found Beckert's eye as she swallowed, hard. “So, tell me, Beck. Why'd your buddy shoot mine?”

“I never-” Beckert swallowed. “I- we never, never meant to hurt you, I swear, I-”

“Dunno where you're from, but a zinger in the head looks like it would hurt plenty. Now,” Hange licked their lips, “this is a fun little detail I _almost_ forgot about. Feels like a million years ago that you chatted me up in that hallway telling me about your brother having trouble sleeping no matter what he tried. And what a miraculous thing Halcion was to fix him right up. Bet you don't even have a brother. Do you have a brother, Beck?”

Beckert folded in on herself. She didn't look at Hange.

“Figured,” Hange said. “I gotta say – well done. Hadn't suspected a thing. Read up on it and gave it to Mike straightaway, even tried it myself. Levi must've caught wind and tried it, too, nearly fucked up the Manitoba op, he'd taken so much. But you knew what it would do. You knew it-”

“Mike? Why would you…why give it to Mike?”

“We were doing so well, kid. Don't play dumb.”

“I'm not,” Beckert blurted, “I swear, Hange, I did everything I was supposed to – I was sent to this side-”

“This side?”

“This side of the-” Beckert stopped, brows drawn and breathing rapidly. “You're gonna think this is nuts. You're gonna tell me I'm crazy, but I'm not, I swear-”

“Kid, I've seen machines that drop folks into other fuckin' universes,” Hange said with a wry smile. “Matter of fact, I'm pretty sure I was building one of 'em. I've seen titans fat as black holes, seen- seen...” Seen Mike detonate his own ship. Seen one man borrowing another's voice (“ _Please," Levi, Erwin, said. "Find Earth. Find yourself-”_ ). Seen humanity's end. “...seen a lotta shit.”

Beckert stared, open-mouthed.

“Kid?” Hange whistled.

“You – how – the machine,” they demanded, “describe it.”

“Uh...bizarro-world jacuzzi?”

Beckert's eyes were impossibly wide. “How-” She sat back. “The rumors. The machine you were building. It was The Pool. But how could you have-”

“I take everything back, you're a terrible mole,” Hange scoffed.

“I didn't think to look for it! I wasn't – I wasn't ordered to, I wasn't told there were more of you.”

“More what? And what's this 'Pool'?” Hange asked, leaning forward.

“That's what he calls it-”

“Who?”

Beckert's sigh came out a shudder. “Mr. Smith.”

 

*

 

 _Titans in their present form have walked the earth for just over forty years. Their origin is unknown to us. Some studies suggest a rare bacterial infection as the catalyst for these physiological changes in the human body, while other models support the presence of an artificially conceived viral agent. Our research will be made available to the public in staggered releases over the coming_ _days_ _. The secrecy with which we were forced to conduct our research severely limited our progress and narrowed our perspective. It is my sincere belief that if all the best minds in the world come together without the bindings of secrecy and red tape, we may finally begin to understand this plague._

_Under no circumstances do we advise approaching a titan in the name of research or observation without the most thorough safeguards. I will now outline-_

The broadcast continued for nearly eighteen uninterrupted hours before it began to repeat. It illuminated the history of the Survey Corps, of the International Military Police. Of radicals, of titans. All their data, all their operation formations and capture procedures, everything that was theirs so tightly guarded was made the world's.

Johannesburg's division calmed the city. The local division knew their people. Levi was hardly needed. They knew not to suppress marches but to shape them and coordinate them, knew to clear parks for rallies, knew to let parents and children and widows and orphans break their silence without fear of a knock on their door and a man in a suit for the first time in forty years.

Nifa, as the newly appointed communications chief of the Survey Corps, issued statements to the press with the protection of independent volunteer militias that appeared seemingly overnight to fill the void left by the state and federal governments' refusal to offer protection, or, in their words, “to take sides”.

On Erwin's orders, Nifa announced that the Survey Corps would only continue operations once Intermipol releases their operatives. Advancing on titans with a reduced force was so unwise as to be counterproductive, Nifa explained. Not a soul was released following her announcement, but that was to be expected. As long as the public heard it, it was enough. As long as Intermipol's credibility continued to plummet, their open war on the battleground of public relations would be won.

The film explained how civilians may defend against titans in the meantime. Levi hated this part most. He knew they had to give people a fighting chance, but nothing replaced months of specialized training. People will die.

Intermipol shut down broadcast stations. They shut down generators and backup generators. In areas of the world where their authority superseded that of the state police, they shuttered entire grids in their thinly-veiled panic. They attempted to shut down in a day what Erwin had prepared for years. Every backup had a backup. Every brute-force shutdown was undone. They tried to hide a bruise by shooting it.

Levi prowled through the division's communications hub, squinting at the dizzying glow of several dozen monitors as technicians and journalists rushed violently past. It was tiny compared to New York's security division, but it'll do. Their numbers doubled in one day.

His hands curled and uncurled, chasing the touch-memory of a weapon more tangible than a word.

“Captain.”

Levi turned. Chief Kotze wove between a rush of editors flocking to a mounted screen to watch the German chancellor speak out of Munich, not ten miles from Intermipol headquarters.

Chief Kotze handed Levi a folder. “No trace on Zakarius. Nothing yet on the whereabouts of Magnolia and Jones either, but we do have word as of this morning from our birds in D.C. that Washington has eyes on Zoe, Berner and Beckert.”

Levi looked up from the printed correspondence. Hange had Beckert. Beckert was still theirs. They could still exchange her for Jones and Isabel. He could see Isabel again. He frowned. “Has eyes?”

“I'll bet they're using a little more than their eyes.”

“Anything from Zoe or Berner directly?”

“No, sir.”

There was no reason Hange couldn't have sent word in twenty four hours. Not unless they were compromised. Not unless they were being watched.

“Should we press Washington?”

“No,” Levi said thickly. “Anything on Egret? Farlan?”

Kotze spared a glance at the press briefing behind Levi. “Nothing on Egret, and we can't get word from Church directly, but Nifa assures us he's safe. She won't say more, so it might mean he's-”

“-undercover,” Levi finished. An ache settled between his brows. This wasn't his territory. He could coordinate a strike team, several, if it came to that, but not something of this magnitude. Not an international agency in its first violent throes of an existential campaign.

“Captain!”

All but one editor dispersed to take calls and draft responses to the briefing. The one who remained approached Levi and the Chief.

Levi glanced at the departing chancellor. “Report.”

“We'll have the tape for you in your office, Captain,” the editor said, “but the gist of it is, Germany's not budging. They want the International Court involved. They won't touch any of Intermipol's assets.”

“Imagine Washington being so generous,” Kotze said.

The editor raised his brows and looked between them. “Is that something we should-”

“No,” Levi snapped. “Don't write that. Say…” They needed to respond. What would Erwin say? What would Erwin do? The ache blossomed behind his eyes.

“Captain,” Kotze said, “we should hand this one to Nifa.”

Nifa. Of course they should hand it to Nifa. She's their communications chief. Handpicked by Erwin himself. Levi nodded. “Go,” he said, and the editor left to make the call.

Levi strode out of the hub with a vice on his chest. He rested his flushed forehead against a cool windowpane in the hall. Kotze's solid footsteps followed him.

“You need to assign officers,” she said.

Levi blinked. His lashes dragged against the glass.

Kotze stopped beside him. “We're growing too fast to humor your paranoia. Every day, our volunteer numbers double in nearly every major city the world over. I can't play your secretary much longer. My duty is to the South African Corps first. We won't make it past Friday if-”

“We'll make it.”

“You'll be a dead man within the week with or without me.”

A flare of anger willed him upright. “Careful, chief.”

“Or what?” Kotze asked cooly. “We can compare cocks later, Captain, when you assign officers to share the load.” She went on, softer, “We will vet them. They will be career Corps agents, serving for years, decades-”

“Let me remind you that this is a two front war, chief,” Levi said.

“I'd be more inclined to remember that if you told me a single thing about this second phantom enemy.”

Levi strode out of the hall with Kotze on his heels. “All we know is that nothing, not age, not reputation, not ideology, can tell us if any one person is more trustworthy than the next.”

“What do they want?”

“We don't know,” he said as he stopped in the registration hall. They couldn't even enter for how packed it was, could hardly speak for how loud it was, how hopeful and boisterous. He turned and left before anyone recognized him. “And that makes them worse than Intermipol.”

Kotze joined him after collecting the day's recruitment figures. “All day, you give me generalities and shy away from telling me who you can actually trust, but it's not particularly difficult to guess by the people you're tracking. For the record, I sincerely doubt you can get the gang back together before this operation sinks under its own weight.”

“Noted.”

“I wonder. Despite never having met before, you choose to trust me. Why is that?”

Levi stopped walking. “I don't trust you.”

Kotze waited for him to speak again, watching him.

Levi looked her in the eye. “But I know where you live. I know who you love.”

An inch. Another inch and Erwin would have lost more than an ear. Head injuries bleed so freely. He had shined red from crown to toe. He could have drowned in it.

Slowly, as if hanging an an anvil on every word, Levi said, “So if you ever give me reason to believe you report to anyone but me, I will personally make sure you regret that decision for the rest of your fucking life.”

She stared wordlessly for a moment before nodding tightly. He saw it in her face, when the chief understood, when she understood that every officer Levi promoted would be another man or woman whose life he'd need to make peace with destroying should their loyalties stray a hair.

Kotze left to resume her duties. As she strode down the hall, something, a zipper maybe, or the tip of a boot lace, clicked with each step, like the clack of Isabel's charms against her leg. Levi couldn't remember what they looked like.

 

*

Moblit woke with a start. Hange waved distractedly from their slumped sprawl on the end of his bed.

“Where-”

“Dunno,” Hange said. “Somewhere in D.C. Department of Defense goons picked us up, figure they aren't dumb enough to not know who we are.”

“And Beckert?”

Hange nodded stiffly. “She's here.”

Moblit stared. He propped himself against the headboard with a grunt. Hange threw him another pillow. He shoved it between his head and the board and huffed.

“We had a chat,” Hange said.

Moblit's brows rose. Hange gave the room a dirty look and moved to sit beside him over the covers and leaned down to speak into his ear.

“I'd tell you to sit down for this but you've got that covered,” Hange started. Moblit snorted. “Beck over there tells me she reports to someone else, but it ain't Intermipol. You know these...these dreams I get, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Mike's got em. So does Erwin and Levi. Now Beck's telling me they aren't strictly dreams.”

“We were right,” Moblit whispered. “They're places. They're real.”

“Yeah. Or, uh…windows into places, I guess. Our little bird tells me her boss ordered her to, uh... 'switch' back and forth between her hometown and ours-”

“By hometown, you mean-”

“Universe, yeah. Still kinda freaked out over here about this whole multiverse thing, Moblit, let me have my euphemisms.”

“Sure, sure,” Moblit said apologetically. “So, this...hometown of hers-”

“Here's the kicker. Levi dreams of her town too.”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

“And he didn't tell us?”

“How could he? No one knew Beck and Foley were moles, much less from another…town.”

Moblit's face darkened. Hange shook their head forcefully.

“Oh no. We're not doing that,” Hange said. “Not now. We've got enough to unwind without-”

“But we can't ignore it, can we? That Levi might've...he might have known. You've all been dreaming for months. You're telling me he's had _no_ idea-”

Hange sucked in a breath. “Let's. Let's bookmark that, okay? Because right now, Levi's the only thing keeping us above water in the public eye and I'd rather we get his side of this before we start looking for pitchforks.”

“Okay,” Moblit said. “Sorry. I don't know him like you do, I didn't-”

“I know. I get it. Any other time, I'd sound the alarm too, but we're low on friends right now.”

“So Beckert…”

“Yeah, so, she tells me she and Foley switched over about three years ago because her boss wanted 'em to keep an eye on Erwin and Levi. Tells me he wanted to make sure they were safe. Which, considering this profession, is kind of a shitty order, but-”

“They have a funny idea of 'safe', Hange,” Moblit said as he tugged on their ear.

“Right.” Hange swatted him away and stretched their legs out on the sheets. “Turns out her pal Nick played for three teams.”

“Intermipol?”

“Her guess.”

“You don't agree?”

Hange slid downward until they lay beside Moblit. “Doesn't make sense. Making Erwin a martyr? Intermipol's not that stupid.”

“Maybe they figured it would look bad if it was his own agent. They could have played it up as incompetence or something. Or maybe Foley had his own agenda,” Moblit said.

“Or maybe their boss gave 'em separate orders – no,” Hange said suddenly. “That's stupid.”

“Why?”

“Cause her boss is Erwin.”

Moblit's blinked. “What?”

“Yeah,” Hange said. “And not just any Erwin. Erwin Number Two. Erwin Alpha. Erwin Prime. Or would ours be Erwin Prime? We gotta figure out what to call everyone-”

“So Beckert…is a Survey Corps agent...from another universe.”

“Yeah.”

“Sent to ours by Erwin B to...protect Erwin A.”

“Bingo.”

Moblit frowned. “Then why'd she try to escape, at Panacea? They told us she cut the agents holding her and tried to make a run for it before Levi stopped her. And why wait this long to tell us all this? Why now?”

“Dunno. Probably got spooked. Panicked. And feels to me like she's singing now because something must've changed. She tells me they only ever wanted to prop us up while we brawled with Intermipol so that later-”

“Yeah,” Moblit said heatedly, “what happens later? What's their endgame?”

Hange folded their arms across their chest. They shrugged. “Peace. Said Erwin...Erwin B wants to put our heads together, get rid of titans in both universes. Tells me they're a little farther along than we are in terms of tech so at the very least, we'll be able to get something out of the arrangement.”

“And what do they get from us?”

“She didn't say. Doubt she knows, sounds like the kinda thing Erwin B would keep to himself. Ours would. Ears everywhere,” Hange added with another dirty look at the walls.

“Can she switch whenever she wants? Or in her sleep like you can?”

“No. Told me all their people have to use the Pool. The machine I was building - that's what they call it. It switches them. They don't even dream. Not like I do.”

“Where is it?”

“Couldn't tell me. Says she has no idea, that they've got their own version of Intermipol in their town so only a handful of agents Erwin B can trust are allowed to know how to operate it and transport agents back and forth. But boy, she loves making herself useful. Says she's been keeping track of the time between when they drag her out of the Pool and when she's allowed to take her blindfold off. Says based on the drive time and her drop off points, the Pool's gotta be in Texas.”

Moblit snorted. “Sure narrows that down.”

Hange laughed, too. “Target locked.”

The marches hadn't abated. The low roar reached them through the locked windows. Moblit squinted as the afternoon sun blanketed him through crooks in the window blinds.

“Sounds like Erwin B doesn't trust his own agents,” he said.

“Tech that can launch you into a different universe isn't something to fuck with,” Hange snorted. “I'll bet my ass and yours that our Erwin woulda done the same. Hell, I'd do the same.”

“Leave my ass out of this.”

“Do I need a signed consent form?”

“You still remember what those are?”

Hange laughed. For a moment, it was easier. For a moment, they weren't buckling at the weight of two worlds. But it was only for a moment.

“I'm dead.”

Moblit turned. Hange saw him open his mouth to speak from their peripheral before shutting it.

Hange pursed their lips and rubbed their arms for want of something to do. “In her town. On their side. Mike, too, isn't that something? Told me...told me it was before she joined, so she only knows the story. Their Mike and their Hange were heading to a lab to show Erwin progress on some anti-titan sedative…she called it a cure, but I'm not drunk enough to imagine what that means.” Hange laughed nervously. “I mean, just imagine the lines at THAT clinic-”

“Hange.”

“Yeah, yeah, well, he and I – I mean, Mike and the other me – they, uh…they were passing through a decompression chamber and that was it. Someone locked 'em in. Both of 'em suffocated.”

Moblit breathed out. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“But who-”

“Folks who got a dime riding on titans sticking around.”

“Sounds familiar,” Moblit said darkly.

Hange nodded distantly. “Some shit doesn't change. Pretty wild. All of it.”

“You don't sound like a believer.”

Hange snorted. “For someone who doesn't even dream, you're taking this multiple universes thing pretty well. You know something I don't?”

Moblit shrugged. “Once you've seen enough Star Trek-”

“Okay, alright, I know where this is going,” Hange said. “God, but how could I forget the cherry on this shit pie? Ready for the season finale?”

“Hit me.”

“I'm not supposed to dream. Neither is Mike.”

Moblit blinked. “Wait. 'Supposed to'?”

“Yes,” Hange grinned. “Funny way to put it, isn't it?”

“If by funny, you mean incriminating-”

“That, too. Could just be that Beckert's tired, I kinda sprung this on her the second we came here, but…wow. What a rush.”

“Which part?” Moblit asked like he dreaded the answer.

“We know something they don't,” Hange said as if it were patently obvious. “Mike and I, at least. God, I wish we could get in touch with these rings – I just _know_ he has his – but I still don't know how fancy the DOD's equipment is. Don't wanna give him away in case he's….”

“Somewhere he shouldn't be.”

“Right. This is so exciting. Mike and I kick the bucket on Beck's side, and now we're dreaming when we shouldn't be...”

“Think it's connected?”

“I think I wanna chat with Beck a lot more.”

Moblit rubbed his shoulder. Nothing critical had been hit, but sitting, much less standing with a pair of beads in the abdomen, was out of the picture. That meant bed sores.

Hange swatted his hands away and picked up where he left off, rubbing the knots from his shoulder.

“Did you ask about...” Moblit started lowly, “...about Kronos?”

Hange's hands stilled for a moment. “Yeah.”

“You don't sound impressed.”

“Thought for sure she'd have something. Just said that Kronos had been dogging Erwin for years, but wouldn't say what it is, or how, or...”

“She dodged?”

“Ye- No. I don't know. Listen, I've done this a lot, I've interviewed thousands, interrogated – well, more than enough, and I-”

“Ah-”

“Sorry,” Hange said, adjusting their grip. “I thought she sounded sincere. Shit, her pupils contracted. Started to sweat, tremble, the whole nine.”

Moblit frowned. “Why? What did she say?”

“That's what kills me. Nothing. Nothing to go on, anyway. She just...said it's a blight on all of them, looked like just talking about it would summon it.”

Moblit hummed, but didn't say more. He pushed Hange away and thanked them when the knot had gone. Hange stayed beside him. They hadn't slept in nearly a full day, but if they were destined to crash, it wouldn't happen now. Hange bounced their foot off their other calf.

Moblit turned to them. “In your dream – the long one.”

“Hm?”

“You said...you said you and Mike had volunteered to be Erwin's and Levi's buffers. For some kinda tech that let them communicate through – okay, fine, telepathy. It was telepathy. And they needed buffers so that they wouldn't overload or overheat or something. Do you think that's…”

“No idea. Good call, though. The day any of this is a coincidence is the day I marry a ten-meter.”

Moblit laughed, then winced as the motion lanced through his wounds. Hange turned on their side and patted his chest. They didn't want to take their hand away, so they didn't. It rose and fell with his lungs.

Moblit's hand curled at his side. “We shouldn't have come here.”

Hange blinked.

“We're grounded at the worst possible time. If it weren't for….for,” he grazed the bandage at his abdomen.

“Shut up,” Hange said. “And remind me to hit you when there's no chance your heart'll pop out.”

Moblit snorted. “Hange-”

“Thought you were- anyway,” Hange huffed, and took their hand away to fold their arms behind their head. “No use in-”

“What's that?”

Hange heard it too. A knock. Hange jumped off the bed and raised a finger to their lips. Moblit nodded as Hange stalked toward the front door and flicked open the peephole. The man waiting there, all fancy pressed suit and old tennis shoes of him – perked up at the sound and held up his badge. The door was reinforced and soundproof, so that was all Hange was going to get. Still, they inched toward a brittle-looking vase after unlocking the door.

The man slipped inside and locked it after himself before running one hand through his windswept hair and offering Hange the other. “Damn good job with the bugs,” he said as they shook. Hange froze.

“Oh, don't worry,” he said, raising his hands defensively, “Smoothed it over, told the other guys they were kidding themselves even trying it. Imagine that? Trying to get one over the Survey Corps?”

He was buttering them up. He wanted something.

“I'll get right to it,” he said, “Washington doesn't like your stunt one bit. I mean,” he added in a conspiratorial whisper, “I loved it, don't get me wrong. Long time coming if you ask-”

He really wanted something.

“You want us to work for you,” Hange interrupted.

To his credit, Charlie was only thrown for a second. He traded his salesman's smile for a real one. “Case in point,” he said fondly. “You know, I wanted to join to Corps,” he started, walking into the apartment. He clicked his tongue. “But we were an Intermipol family.”

Hange bristled. Then, their brows rose. “Were?”

Charlie turned and hopped onto a kitchenette counter top. “Were,” he said, flashing a smile that didn't reach his eyes. “Looks like we know what happened to grandma now. And an uncle. And a third cousin. And suddenly ma's memory lapse around the summer of '83 makes...” He cleared his throat. “…makes more sense.”

Hange nodded distantly. “Um. Parents,” they said clumsily, pointing at themselves.

Charlie nodded. “Cards on the table, Zoe. We made a mistake.”

“You'll have to be more specific.”

“Oh, just the whole...threatening to kick you guys out of the country thing. That was, boy, that's something we'd love to-”

“Forget about? You can go to Intermipol for that, I hear.”

“Now-” Charlie started, then laughed to himself. “That's fair.”

“Guessing there's a reason you picked us up.”

“Right to the point there again, Christ, what a relief. The yarns these suits spin, they get to you, you know? It's so refreshing to get a-”

“Point.”

“Right, right. We, that is, the White House, we're aware you've moved to Johannesburg-”

“Happily.”

“Of course! Of course. Now, I love Johannesburg. I visit every Summer-”

“No, you don't.”

“No, I don't, but see, the point is, we know the Survey Corps is anything but dead. Once an underground movement balloons, the pavement starts to crack. All these so called independent militias popping up that are...strangely well-coordinated...and stunningly competent...”

The Shadow Corps. It was a matter of time, surely, but that the White House put two and two together within a day was either advantageous or damning, and it depended entirely on what Charlie wanted.

“Why are we here?” Hange asked.

Charlie folded his legs beneath him. “This little underground force of yours is good, but it's starving for supplies, isn't it? For weapons. Intelligence. Hell, they're volunteers. They don't even get paychecks. How long do you think they can stick around when there's no food on the table back home?”

Hange folded their arms and, in a stunning show of self control they'll congratulate themselves on later, even resisted laughing. “Wow. You wanna get in on the ground floor. Bankroll the new Survey Corps and tell the world you were the big damn heroes who helped the Corps when no one else would.”

“Yes,” Charlie said simply.

“And you would be different from Intermipol because...”

“Oh, lord, no, we will be _nothing_ like Intermipol,” Charlie said. “The new Survey Corps retains all sovereignty. No exceptions. Ever.”

“Let me guess. You want us to move back to New York. Or D.C.”

“Not really,” Charlie shrugged. “We'd be awfully flattered, sure, but you can operate from the moon for all we care.”

“So…you want….shares of the company?”

“No.”

“Seats at the table?”

“Nope.”

“Exclusive rights to new tech, new equipment, formations-”

“No, no, and no. Hell, we don't even mind if you accept a gift basket from Germany or China tomorrow.”

“I'm beat. You're telling me the White House will fund us – for bragging rights?”

“Hell of a deal, isn't it?”

It was. It was the kind of deal Hange wouldn't bother conjuring in a fantasy. Now to find the catch. There was always a catch.

“World's gonna be a very different place very, very soon,” Charlie said, breaking Hange out of their thoughts. “I don't want to alarm you – notice we haven't yet given you a television or a phone with internet – but we'd very much like it if the Survey Corps stood on its feet again sooner rather than later. As in, before anyone decides to push the big red button.”

The temperature in the room plummeted. “What are you saying?”

“That film of yours – fantastic by the way, Oscar material – it'll only get so much traction while people are dying in the streets with nothing but a gung-ho volunteer army between them and the devil.”

“So, what,” Hange said, “if the surgeon's late, they'll bomb the tumor?”

“Exactly.”

“But that's stupid. That's insane-”

“So are titans. So is finding out you've been lied to, so's finding out the most prominent policing force in the world likes to dig around in Nana's brain.” Charlie drummed on the counter. “I'm sure you'll receive plenty of offers soon enough. You can wait and solicit donations and try to stitch some kind of budget together, but by then, we'll be telling kids to start ducking under desks again.”

Hange bit straight through their lip. “Why me? Levi's acting commander.”

“Honestly? We got lucky. We stayed in the area after meeting with Mr. Smith and caught your little getaway. That, and our records suggest that you are next in line, no?”

“Sure. When I'm not under house arrest.”

“Speaking of which...” Charlie started slowly, delicately.

The catch.

“We would love, and I mean positively adore it, if you and your companions remained stateside and acted as our official liaison between the White House and the new Survey Corps from within the Department of Defense.”

“So it's mandatory.”

“It's mandatory.”

“How long?”

“Just until things quiet down.”

“That's awfully vague.”

“Things are awfully awful.”

“Twenty percent.”

“Come again?”

“Until titan attacks fall twenty percent,” Hange said. “Then we can leave.”

“Fifty.”

“Thirty-five.”

“Done.”

“Not yet,” Hange said, “Get me a line to Levi.”

 

*

Upon the highly televised capture of commander Erwin Smith, Intermipol halted all Survey Corps operations and froze their assets in what was, in their words, a “symbolic gesture” of force. Cities burned within the hour. The stock market plunged.

On the first day, titan attacks tripled in frequency worldwide. Intermipol scrambled to reauthorize operations, but it was too late. The wire was tripped.

Mike had argued for weeks with Erwin about how unspeakably arrogant it would be to hang the entire operation on Intermipol's egotism. Surely, Mike argued, they would know their own policies. Surely, they would be able to repeal any one of them on a whim if it suited their interests. In return, Erwin had offered Mike a list. It was a short one.

The Silvers

Isabel Magnolia and Farlan Church

Levi

Trinidad's Port of Spain

There were others, Erwin had said, but this was the bedrock. This was the engine of their mutiny.

By seeking out lines of communication with the formerly active Silvers and allowing Intermipol to catch them in the act, Erwin pushed it to drape red tape around all efforts to contact and organize with outside groups and agencies.

By recruiting known fugitives Isabel Magnolia and Farlan Church, Erwin pushed them to enact increasingly draconian recruitment and disciplinary policies.

By recruiting Levi, one of Intermipol's most wanted, Intermipol increased surveillance and began to dive into members' private records and information with such naked enthusiasm that the Corps had seen its largest drop in agent population in four years – a drop that was more than made up for when, one by one, Erwin recruited these former Corps agents into their blossoming backup reserve, the Shadow Corps. This was the embryo of the new Survey Corps. This was what would rise when the old beleaguered Corps breathed its last.

Every trap needed a trigger. A tripwire. Some traps needed two. One, Erwin had found in the days after the incursion at Trinidad's Port of Spain during their global survey. Even Mike had been unaware that their probe found anything of significance.

Erwin had discovered an Intermipol agent whose secure line had momentarily shuddered. He refused to tell Mike exactly what he'd found in the data stream. Said if there was the slightest chance the information was falsified or simply wrong, he would implicate no one but himself. He named it the Severance Package and sent it along to Agent Iaso to verify its contents with her connections within Iaso Industries.

This was the emergency trigger. If all else failed, this would be their final card.

But the first and more immediate tripwire, the one Intermipol was meant to trip, was of its own making. Because the Port of Spain incursion was so devastating – the first level three incursion in two years – Erwin had shut down nonessential Corps operations in statistically safer regions and cities so that personnel and funds could be freed to assist with processing the aftermath of the attack. That Erwin tapped Munich's branch was entirely a matter of course, but so deeply incensed was Intermipol that their precious headquarter city was tapped that it wasn't a week before the board approved a measure to forbid the commander of the Survey Corps from halting or resuming any regional operations unless the action is approved by the Intermipol board.

Erwin had pried into their legalese and even met with an Intermipol board member to confirm that the measure meant that both Intermipol _and_ the sitting commander were needed to alter both regional and global operation status.

Knowing how dearly Intermipol loved their symbolic gestures, Erwin approved the measure to halt operations in writing before the film had even aired, with the promise of approving a subsequent resumption once the Survey Corps was granted independence from the International Military Police.

Because the resumption was only legally sanctioned by the Intermipol board but not the commander, every agent who returned to work that day received an automatic strike on their record as a result of Intermipol's overhauled disciplinary system, a vast majority of whom, by Mike's most recent count, already had at least one strike against them. By deliberately remaining at work, they received a second strike. Three strikes mandated immediate termination.

In one hour, ninety-seven percent of all global Survey Corps personnel were disbanded.

Intermipol regulations required three months of internal background checks and psychological evaluations before recruits could become viable. Coordination with outside groups like militias and militaries required so many rounds of approval under Intermipol's new system that it would take even longer than approving a single recruit. In one hour, the Survey Corps was slain, and who but the world watched Intermipol slit its throat by the light of day.

Intermipol attempted to compensate with their own forces, but it was a farce. An international embarrassment. No one, Mike knew, but himself and Erwin knew how intimately the Survey Corps had been ingrained into modern society. They patrolled metros and hospitals, factories and gardens, crawled online message boards and network feeds for possible sightings and were even stationed in bars and lounges as drunks and bartenders and everyone in between to catch the whispers of “ _you'll never believe what I just saw_ -”

On the second day, titan attacks increased tenfold. Metros the world over shut down indefinitely upon reports of underground infestations and head-on collisions in London, Moscow, and Boston within hours of one another. Schools and factories shut down. All construction halted. Governments began instructing citizens to stay home. On the first day, the Dow Jones industrial average fell forty-three percent. A dozen countries suspended their markets on the second.

U.N. representatives announced an emergency conference in New York once the national guard secured the city.

Mike leaned out of the shade of some mom and pop diner by the side of the road and swiped against the rim of his ring to shut off the holo. There was only so much he could do from the road, only so many militias he can coordinate remotely, but from what his Shadow Corps contacts report, nearly all of the disbanded Survey Corps personnel found their way into their ranks. That was the easy part.

Erwin got another detail wrong. Even he couldn’t have predicted just how vulnerable the world was without the Survey Corps. Their silent work meant that municipalities had never even seen the need to organize any sort of contingency should the agency hiccup, let alone disintegrate.

The plan had been to organize the Shadow Corps into pockets of well-oiled and seemingly private militias before uniting them in the public eye into the new, independent Survey Corps. They were so sure they'd have more time. More people. They knew Erwin would be detained, but they hadn't foreseen Intermipol's continued hold on Nanaba, Hange missing in action, Mike's flight. Isabel was also missing, and Nifa refused to divulge anything of Farlan's mission. That left the least likely of them, left Levi, to shoulder the work of five.

Mike had wanted to turn back. He almost did.

He couldn't now.

Mike returned to his bike. He was a mile out from an American military airbase, inside of which every man and woman with a soul and a beating heart smelled like Nick Foley and Elise Beckert.

*

On the evening of the second day, Levi left the conference call. Hange was alive. They were safe. The Unites States was offering a blank check, and for now, they were leaving Beckert alone.

But Hange was being watched. There was no guarantee their most innocuous conversation couldn't be spun into something ugly, something damning, if the DOD willed it. If a single mole within the DOD willed it.

Levi bathed in the communal showers and dropped into the cot he kept in his office. No sense in renting a place if he spent all but a handful of his hours here. He'd actually lived to understand why Erwin had never actually slept in his apartment.

After an hour of tossing, Levi stood and came to his desk. No sense in laying there when there were things that needed doing. The Shadow Corps was growing well ahead of schedule, which might have raised alarms about over-reaching, but their operation statistics, mortality rates, and territorial claims belied such a well-oiled machine that Levi wondered if Erwin hadn't planned for even this contingency.

Should Intermipol refuse to grant them independence, the Shadow Corps will simply rise as the new Survey Corps and absorb the last of the old. If, in their infinite wisdom, Intermipol bows, the merger will happen in reverse. The law was theirs. The public was theirs. They had already won.

Intermipol was being eerily silent.

 _Wait_ , Nifa said. _Wait_ , Kotze said. _Wait_ , Hange said. _Let the public demand Erwin's release first. We can't seem too eager. We can't-_

Levi closed his fists into his hair and bit into his lip before he said or did something he shouldn't at this hour. Two days. Two days without news. Even their moles within Intermipol had nothing. Erwin had all but dropped off the face of the earth.

Of course no one cared about one man when their own children were being hunted in broad daylight. Levi would be stupid to think otherwise. Erwin did this. He did this to himself. He probably couldn't wait to be made a martyr, Levi thought savagely.

He wondered about Mike, Hange. Wondered if they were having trouble sleeping knowing where Erwin was, where they let him go. Where they had all let him go. All three of them. At least they knew Nanaba was safe. According to their contacts on the inside, she wasn't even being considered for reintegration, having nothing to implicate her and a high enough status within the Corps that just throwing her in there would stoke an uproar.

But they had cause with Erwin. They had all the reason in the world.

Levi rested his eyes for a moment before realizing what he had nearly done. He pushed away from the desk, forced himself back on the cot and cuffed one of his wrists to an exposed steel pipe. He willed his heart to stop its hysterical beat.

He hadn't hallucinated in two days, and even the dreams grew hazier, less focused. He couldn't speak to Erwin, couldn't find Mike, and couldn't trust Hange's line to be secure to ask how any of them fared with theirs. It wasn't supposed to be like this. The house divided before they'd even started.

Erwin had made him promise. He'd made him promise to wait. To abandon any rescue attempts, to thwart any others.

That wasn't exactly right. Erwin hadn't made him do a thing. He'd never, once, forced him to do anything. Still, Levi hoped he could pretend a little longer. If he stopped hating Erwin, he might just have the clarity of mind to remember that he missed him. That he was afraid.

Levi woke to a sharp pain in his hand. His left was bruised and scraped raw and bleeding into the sheets. It was out of the cuff.

He schooled his breathing and peered around the pre-dawn office. The doors and windows were locked. Nothing was out of place. He sat up and groaned as another flare of pain lanced from his thumb. He couldn't have gotten out in his sleep. This took strength. It took intent. Belatedly, he realized there was a pen in his his other hand. A red pen. He tossed it aside and blinked through the dark toward his desk.

The drawer was open. Not a crack – all the way. It wasn't so much a clue as a neon billboard.

He stood, unclasped a handgun from underneath the cot and moved closer. Inside was a loose page. On it was, written in red:

 _If you don't_ _find_ _him, I will._

 


	18. Powerful Friends

 

Mike watched through his surrogate's eyes as he lifted his hands at the loaded barrel of a gun. The dreams had become scarce, but even as they fragmented and warbled, they became less the fragments of a thousand broken mirrors than the shards of just one – recognizable enough to find the narrative in the gleam.

This other Mike was looking for someone.

The gun pointed at him was one of three rifles held by three men surrounding him within sight of a sprawling settlement, from which a larger contingent was heading his way on horseback. Mike couldn't be sure exactly when he was, but he had observed and studied enough of the sights and smells of his dreams to pin down in his waking hours that this other Mike had wandered southwest. That this was long before his time. Centuries before. That these people wore their clothing and filled their harnesses a lot like the ones he'd reported to once before in his dreams.

When the contingent drew closer and Mike could at last make out their faces, he understood why the other Mike had come here.

It was the translator. She had helped him report titan movements in their area to what he believed now to have been Navajo titan hunters. His counterpart recognized her, too.

“You,” he said suddenly, “I need-”

The settlement guard barked something to quiet him. The translator approached him, unreadable.

“Recon Ranger,” she said. “We never agreed to this meeting.”

“No. But this is about 'em, ma'am, the titans.” He lowered his hands. “I've been hearing whispers. Strange things from strange people. Didn't think nothin' of it. A drunk here, a wanderer there. But it adds up, ma'am. I can't keep hearing this name and figure it means nothing. Not when it comes on the heels of one massive invasion after another.”

“What name, Ranger?”

Mike's counterpart glanced askance at the others. He chewed on his lip and asked, “Might I write it down, ma'am?”

The translator nodded.

Mike watched his own hands slip a notebook from his bag and hold it close to his chest as he scrawled the name large on the page. He tore it out and held it out at arm's length. The rifles raised a hair as the translator came only so close as to take it and then move away. She almost fooled him with her stony eyes, but the harsh set of her jaw was enough.

“You know it, ma'am. This name.” It wasn't a question. “Now I wanna know why that kid you brought with you scratched it in the sands that day, under my horse.”

She looked up.

“I wanna know,” Mike's counterpart said, and he felt the sting in his throat as if it were his own, heard the words crack as if he'd forced them out himself, “why that boy wrote this name in the sand the same damned day I return to camp and find the Rangers, find all my, my fr- my friends. My wife. Find em' all in pieces. And I wanna know why utterin' it's like a klaxon, like a gong meant to raise these beasts from Hell.”

The paper wrinkled in her hands. She waved away the guard. The guns descended as she ripped the page to pieces. The wind carried them across the plains.

“So do I,” she said. To one of the guards, she said, “Find Eren.”

 

Mike woke with a start. Moonlight and coyote-howl greeted him. Mouth cottony and heart pounding, he reached blindly for a water bottle in the dim light of the motel sign oozing through the thin curtains. The dreams were getting shorter.

In the morning, he left the roadside town and followed a lead. There were more than enough to choose from. He'd charted a straight line to D.C upon rooting out the military base, the hive with every man and woman in it stinking like Foley, thinking that this was it. This was what he'd been looking for. And it was too big for him, much too big and too important to risk capture, to risk that this kind of intel not get to the right people in time. He couldn't draw too close, couldn't risk even speaking to them.

He'd thought this sincerely, until he passed another military base. And then a training academy. And then a naval recruiting station. Each hive larger than the last.

He recorded locations, body counts and dates in his ring. Too risky to transmit, even to entrust it to a courier.

It wasn't his place to assume or to analyze. Not when he had so few resources on hand to do it. Still, the possibility that it was the United States government that had all along been complicit in exacerbating these dreams was enough to chill him even in the Southern sun.

In a week, he'd found half a dozen in as many states. In two weeks, he'd found fifteen. Exclusively on government property, nearly all of them military. By then, the stench was a constant thing. A heady fog that dulled his nose. He didn't realize he was being followed. He didn't realize until industrial nails punctured his tires, until the butt of a gun met the back of his head.

 

*

 

The Iaso agent made contact on the fourth day. Her complicated record had made her presence anywhere near Intermipol in this climate too risky, and so she acted on Erwin's order to pull out the moment she felt little more could be gained by her presence behind enemy lines.

Levi swallowed his own ego and requested her assistance in keeping the two halves of the Corps alive – the crumbling old and the boisterous new. Her administrative training in preparation for her Iaso and Intermipol assignments proved invaluable. Though it was too dangerous still for her to fly out to Johannesburg, she was able even so to advise him when to slacken the sails and when to tighten, when to skirt a maelstrom and when to dive inside.

At rest, his hand never strayed far from his shoulder, from his neck, even when Dragunov hadn't returned in a week. The dreams were gone in two. He hadn't yet found a way to communicate with Hange on non-government-approved lines. Mike was still gone. Hysteria loves isolation.

They killed him. It was his first and only thought. He didn't dream anymore because Erwin was dead. It was the only explanation. It had to be. And of all the people, of all the forces in the world, it was Intermipol which reassured him.

To assuage rumors and allegations of mistreatment or torture, Intermipol broke a three-day silence to trot out a sharply dressed sympathetic-looking representative in front of a camera to announce that it was well within their power to investigate mutiny within the Survey Cops, regardless of rank. Levi would have missed the next part had Kotze not turned the feed back on.

It was Erwin. Wearing an inconspicuous white dress shirt and white pants, he was trotted out, too, in front of the cameras to sit before them and confirm the words of the spokesman before him. Citing legal statutes, citing his own perfect health and clarity of thought. Denying mistreatment with hollow eyes. If the camerawork and lighting weren't so clever, it could be mistaken for a hostage tape.

Levi played the footage back five times later that afternoon. No marks – but Intermipol wouldn't be so stupid as to show signs of physical harm. Levi studied his blinking, but found nothing there either – the event was too short for him to get out any meaningful message through Morse, anyway. The prepared speech lasted barely a minute.

Three days. Three days in reintegration and Erwin still had that set in his jaw and the challenging tilt of his head. His movements were a fraction too slow and his chest rose a beat too fast, but he was fighting. He was surviving.

Intermipol promised to release footage of him every three days thereafter in a show of, in their words, their great generosity and transparency. But clever lights and makeup artists couldn't hide the fading light in his eyes. The best audio mixing couldn't fill the cracks in his voice.

“They're goading us, Hange,” Levi said.

Hange paced around the room on their end of the video call. “We can do it. Nice and clean. It'd be so easy-”

Levi slammed his palm on his desk as the video feed crackled. “That's not the point. Even if you snap your fingers and Erwin pops into existence next to you right now, you know what's gonna happen?”

“But Levi-”

“Intermipol's gonna cry its pretty little eyes out and we don't get the benefit of the doubt anymore. We don't have the high ground and that's all we fucking have now, it's what Erwin gave us and it's the one last thing they can take from us and they know it. So don't-”

“God, I know, I know, Levi,” Hange snapped. They curled their hands into fists to keep from ending the call. Levi leaned back in his chair with a thud.

“Sorry,” he said. “It's just-”

“Yeah. I wish we could just...”

“Yeah.”

Intermipol showed Erwin every three days as per their promise. He repeated the same message, nearly word for word, along with some topical observation clearly fed to him by Intermipol to give the appearance that he's in any capacity to comment about any other goings on in the world.

The Shadow Corps reacted. Their numbers grew, their support bloomed. Journalists and activists sympathetic to the organization offered their sympathies, and soon, their support. The United States' blank check came without caveat but for Hange's services until the new Survey Corps can stand on its own wobbling feet. But something new had begun.

In the absence of a centralized structure – Levi's work in Johannesburg and Hange's remote support from D.C. was barely enough to handle central logistics and the legal labyrinth of separating from Intermipol – the infant Shadow Corps had begun to organize itself. It was imperfect – the most organized forces concentrated themselves in megalopolises, leaving rural areas vulnerable – but leaders began to rise. Systems were formed and followed. The formless thing, in fits and false starts, was crafting its own skeleton, carving its own limbs. Soon, it might even be out of their hands. Out of their control. Maybe it was never meant to be controlled. Maybe there's a better way.

But this was a philosophical arena Levi had no experience with and no desire to enter. This was Erwin's favorite battlefield. If he only knew what they'd accomplished. If he only knew what Survey Corps veterans could accomplish without muzzles. He'd be proud. He'd be so proud.

During the second week since the film's drop, an anonymous package was left for Levi at the door of the Johannesburg division. A cell phone. Cheap. Disposable. Typical of a burner phone. After a vigorous analysis that found no tracker or trigger within it, the lab put it back together and left the rest to Levi. After riding far enough out of the city to avoid collateral should it still somehow act as a homing beacon, Levi powered it on and looked inside. A text notification popped up.

_Call me! - Isabel_

Levi's fingers flew over the numbers too quickly. He had to redial three times.

“Hello?”

“Isabel,” he breathed.

“Levi-”

“Are you hurt? Where are you? Are they-”

“I'm okay,” she said. “Jones, too. We're learning so much here-”

“What? What do you mean, what the hell are they telling you-”

“Don't interrupt! We're learning how to infiltrate Intermipol.”

Levi covered the phone to swear. He raised it again. “Where is she? Where the _fuck_ is Egret-”

“She said she was too busy to contact you and that she's real sorry-”

“Real sorry?” he seethed. “She doesn't know what sorry is-”

“-and that she knew you'd react like this so she let me do the honors-”

“Honors? She calls these honors? Looks like she's committing to this hostage taking gig-”

“We're not hostages!”

Levi stopped dead.

“You really think that,” Levi said, stricken. “She got to you. Isabel, you can't believe a word she-”

“Will you listen to me? I'm fine, we're being treated perfectly fine, we're even being trained to-”

“Do you hear yourself, Isabel? Enough. Where are you?”

“You're not letting me finish! I'm not some damsel-”

“Don't make this something it isn't. Can you leave? Tell me, can you step out of there, wherever you are, right now and come here and stand right in front of me whenever you please? Can you do that? Would she let you do that?”

“I mean-”

“If the answer's not abso-fucking-lutely then you're a _hostage_ , Isabel-”

“I want to be here.”

Levi grit his teeth until it hurt.

“Will you listen to me?” she said. “Don't what I have to say matters?”

Not if the words out of your mouth are ones planted by Egret, he almost said.

“Count to ten, Levi.”

He laughed hollowly.

“She's teaching us all of Intermipol's tricks. Everything from floor plans to wiring weaknesses, drop-points-”

“And what does she plan to do? Let you two stage a rescue so that they're off clean when you get caught and killed-”

“The intel's for you!”

“You'll have to explain that.”

“We're intermediaries. She's showing us the plans and routes and how she found them so that we can analyze them and hand them over to you when we're freed-”

“Isabel, you can't seriously think she can't just fabricate every fucking detail-”

“-so that you can put a team together and save Erwin.”

Levi said nothing. He shut his eyes and sat into the broad roots of a tree, having paced right off the empty road and into a stretch of meadow.

“Levi? Aren't you excited? Or maybe you already have a plan? Do you – I mean, it's been almost two weeks.”

“I know.”

“When are we saving Erwin?”

Levi blinked. His eyes stung. “We're not.”

“We're – not?”

He heard another voice on Isabel's side grow louder before the line crackled with movement.

“Back up,” Egret said, having taken the phone. “What's this about not saving Er-”

“You spineless bitch,” Levi snarled. “You wanna chat, come have a fucking chat where I can see you-”

“Now, now. You're not the only busy bee right now. Though I'd swear you'd have been a little busier about this whole saving Erwin thing.”

“That's a funny way of checking up on your threat.”

“What threat?

“Don't fuck with me. Your version of me left me a pretty little message about a week back. “Save him or I will”.

The line was silent for a beat. “Wow,” she said humorlessly. “This whole getting you to trust us thing would be a hell of a lot easier if the boss's pet didn't slip out of his leash so often.”

“Not that we didn't know your game, but you don't really announce it to the party you wanna pull a fast one on.”

“One day, we'll be having margaritas on a beach somewhere, A.T. – that's After Titans, as in, when they're all gone, every last one – and you're gonna eat your words. Swear it on my soul, Levi, one day you'll see how wrong you are and-”

“Get to the point.”

“Listen, we had a deal. And if I remember right, you get the better part of it. Isabel and Jones, all for just-”

“Hange's apartment is a legal sanctuary, dumbass. The second Beckert steps out of there, the fed's'll have her head. We're doing you a favor. So hand over-”

“Deal's a deal.”

Levi stood and paced again to quiet the roiling in his gut.

“Hey!” Egret shouted when he didn't say any more. “Don't you want the good news?”

Levi shut his eyes.

“We found Nanaba. She's out.”

“What?”

“She's all yours! Seriously, if I were you, I would like me so much right now-”

“What do you mean, she's out? Did you- did you bust-”

“No, silly, we're saving the fun stuff for Erwin. No, we just expedited her release. Greased some palms, the usual thing. Don't worry, no paper trail, no digital footprint, yada yada-”

“Where is she now?”

“Heading your way. Gave her a primer on who I am and for someone who doesn't know a thing about hopping universes, she sure is on board this whole-”

“You just…you just told her?”

“She wasn't in reintegration, just your plain ol' holding cell. Wouldn't mess with someone in a vulnerable state, Levi, who do you take me for-”

“No, you- you just told her who you are? Who Er- who your boss is?”

“Yeah. No secrets, Levi, I mean it. We'll earn your trust, we will. This Beckert thing is pain in the ass because we really do need her back to hear what the hell happened at Panacea-”

“You don't need her for that. He was a mole,” Levi said, parroting Hange's findings. “And she panicked.”

“Whose mole?”

“Intermipol's.”

Egret scoffed. “That rat bastard. He played the whole field, Levi. I'll prove it to you. Smith – my boss – will prove it to you. To you and Erwin. When we get him out-”

“We're not.”

“Not what?”

“We're not busting him out. Not me. Not you.”

“That's...cute, Levi, but this is a secure line, we can talk-”

“We're going through the courts. The suits tell me they can move up the hearing but it'll take time to-”

“Wait. You're serious.”

“Yes.”

“So he's still in there...because you're not even trying.”

“I have orders.”

Egret swore. “Do you have any idea, _any_ idea what-”

“I've known agents who'd be in there a day forget their own names,” Levi said. “A week and they couldn't recognize their own brats. I rehabilitated some of them myself. So don't give me a fucking lecture.”

“And you'd let Erwin-”

“This is bigger than Erwin,” he said through his teeth.

“Those are his words.”

“And now they're mine. You wanna earn my shitting trust? Stay away from Intermipol.”

“I've got eyes on the inside. You think they're giving him the civilian treatment? You wanna know what they're doing to him? Don't you want-”

Levi ended the call. He had his orders. What he wanted didn't matter, never mattered.

 

The lawsuit against the International Military Police will go to trial in nine months. The International Court of Justice took measures – at Levi's extrajudicial insistence – to speed up the process given the importance of resolving the conflict in the face of rising titan and radical incursions. Intermipol's real work in tracking and breaking radical rings had buckled to compensate for the Corps' fall. Though he was more than happy to provide it, Levi's insistence wasn't the only thing that gave the ICJ reason to act quickly. The world would not survive a vacuum like this for long. A depression to make the 2018 crash look like the roaring twenties was in its first throes. Every day, another nation fell under martial law.

A separate suit had been filed against the wrongful detention of Erwin Smith and endeavored to contest Intermipol's power to institutionalize anyone without legal representation or due process. They needed to move it up again. Their legal team blustered that this is the first time anyone's managed to cut the time before a trial three time, that it's a miracle they've been able to cut it down to three months.

Levi turned to them, made sure his face promised unique harm to anyone who disagreed. “Cut it. Again.”

Kotze watched him pace up and down the room when the lawyers left. She kicked a chair toward him with a knowing “Go ahead.”

Levi introduced it to the far wall. He didn't feel any better.

“Strange,” Kotze said as the last splinters settled.

“What?” Levi snapped. Three months. One month and the agent was irretrievable, their self prior to entering reintegration lost to false memories and a bastardization of what few remained. Never in the Survey's history has there been an exception that lasted past a month and a half. Erwin was only a man.

“Survey's never been a 'by the book' kinda organization,” Kotze said. “Whole reason Intermipol's losing ground is because commander Smith opposed it on his terms. I don't understand why we can't do that again.”

“Because we're still opposing it on his terms,” Levi said, breathing and counting to three in between. “We're still following his orders.”

“Circumstances change-”

Levi rounded on her, height be damned. “You think I wouldn't love to snap every fucking neck between me and him? Have some fucking discipline.”

Kotze said nothing. Levi turned away and raked his hand through his hair, pulled at the barbells in his nape without thinking. He laughed bitterly. “You on board for a prison break, too?” he said. “Undermine this entire fucking operation, prove Intermipol's point that we're all petty lawless bastards?”

“I don't know. It's not my job to know. My jurisdiction begins and ends with South Africa. But I've seen what people look like when they return from reintegration. Civilians. Even those who volunteered themselves. I don’t know that some Hollywood-level prison break is the answer. Probably not. But you have the public. Use it. Do something.”

And when Levi set aside his own ego for a moment, he thinks he saw something like fear in that bravado, something like a plea.

He sat down to a vid chat with Jones that evening, then with Isabel. She asked about Erwin. Levi told her they're doing all they can, and tried not to gag on the lie.

Three weeks. Hange called him on an emergency line while Levi trained local strike teams. Moblit had caught irregularities in the audio mixing of the most recent footage of Erwin and then, frame and lighting inconsistencies. Erwin hadn't trusted him with editing the film for nothing.

It wasn't Erwin they were trotting out anymore. The most recent footage was a lie. A convincing splice.

“Why? How long?” Levi demanded.

“The newest one, from this morning,” Hange said, playing at keeping calm. Their eyes, their wild eyes, betrayed them.

Levi knew he looked no better. “You're sure. You're not overreacting? Don't fuck with me, Hange, I know you wanted to break him out-”

Moblit appeared suddenly. “I know I'm not much of a neutral party, sir,” he said hurriedly, “but for what it's worth, it's true. I'm sending the footage and my analysis over now and a third party on your end can confirm. It's not him. This is the first time-”

“Why?” Levi demanded. “Why now? What could-” He stopped. Three weeks. Most broke in one. Survey veterans lasted between two and three. Erwin was only a man.

“Maybe he just- just- maybe he-” Hange stuttered.

“We knew. We knew this would happen-” Levi started.

“Levi, I'm not dreaming anymore,” Hange said suddenly, and Levi froze.

“Hange, stop-”

Levi hadn't had time to consider what it meant, and he'd long since forcibly abandoned those first seeds of hysteria that followed the sputtering end of his own dreams, and he refused to let Hange fuel that fire again.

“It matches up,” Hange said, “His capture, the dreams ending – do you still have them, Levi? Don't tell me, I know-”

The line wasn't secure. “Hange, _shut_ _up_ -”

“I can see it. I know you don't have them anymore. Don't you see? It's Erwin. Something about Erwin, he – he's some kind of catalyst. Intermipol would only risk pulling this stunt if he's dead or hurt or maimed so maybe it's...it's connected to his well-being or, or maybe its distance, maybe distance is a factor-”

“Like when we split in the middle of the global survey and still dreamed? Don't be stupid- and quit talking about this shit on an unsecured line-” Levi said.

“This one's secure, don't you think I would've made sure of it?” Hange waved him off. “And we didn't split up.”

“Yes, we did,” Levi snapped. “In the Southwest. In Europe, North Africa-”

“You and Erwin never split up. Never longer than a week, at least.”

“So what?”

“When Mike left, the dreams didn't stop. When I split from you and Erwin in the global survey, nothing happened either. It's something to do with Erwin – and you.”

“You're crazy. You think Erwin or I have something to do with this? You think we're, what, keeping something from you, is that it?” His voice rose.

Hange's rose higher. “If I have to think about what they're doing or not doing to Erwin for one more second, if I have to try to figure out what the hell you're thinking waiting this long or where Mike is or if he's even alive, I'll go insane.”

“I'm following-”

“Orders, yeah. And while you're doing that, the same Erwin who gave you those orders is being drilled away, maybe _literally_ -”

The door opened. Levi turned, ready to bark at whoever was interrupting.

Hange gasped behind him. “Nan!”

Nanaba shut the door and locked it again. There were new lines in her face, new shadows in her hardened eyes. Levi met her halfway and didn't protest when she embraced him, returned it, even. She drew away and looked him up and down. “You look like shit.”

Levi huffed. “You here to fix that?”

“Sure am,” she said, then shook her head in mock admonishment. “Ya'll really fell apart without me.”

“Well,” Hange said, “There was this whole mutiny thing...”

“Details,” Nanaba said, and then to Levi, “I'll take over operations. Brought in contacts to take care of legal, too. You'll be free to-”

“Get Erwin!” Hange said.

“No,” Nanaba said. Hange's brows nearly met their hairline. Levi's drew together. Then, he realized.

“You've been in holding for more than a month. What'd you find?” Levi asked.

“Fear,” she said. “Everyone there stinks of it. They're desperate.”

“The footage from this morning,” Levi recalled. He and Hange brought Nanaba up to speed. She shook her head.

“Erwin's fine,” she said. “I'd bet my right tit. They're prodding us to accuse them of wrongdoing or torture only to bring Erwin out again right as he was before. Make us look like idiots. They'll be able to say that Survey overreacts and embellishes, then point to the film and say the same. Release your analysis to the public without comment and let the journos and media sharks handle this one.”

“So now that you're free, you're commander now?” Hange asked. “Like Erwin wanted?”

“Objections?”

Levi shrugged noncommittally. Hange saluted.

“Your orders supersede Erwin's, then,” Hange went on.

“Hange-” Levi warned.

“They do,” Nanaba said.

“Then we can bust him-”

“No,” Nanaba said. Again, both Levi and Hange gave her their full attention. She crossed her arms, her eyes distant. “He's waiting, too. Sitting on something.”

Levi and Hange threw up their hands nearly in unison at the vague answer. “Well?” Hange prodded.

“I don't know more than that. Don't even know if the intel is still in play. It's been a while.” She turned to Levi. “Agent Iaso might know more. She gave me the package to give to Erwin while you kids were away on your global survey. Even if I wanted to snoop, I wouldn't have been able to crack it. Mike might know more, too. Where is he?”

Hange looked away.

“Sabbatical,” Levi said wryly.

“How many teams are looking for him?”

“Of the ones we can spare? One.”

Nanaba set her jaw and looked like she dearly wanted to let Levi know exactly what she thought of that. She breathed in and out. “Good thing I'm back, then,” she said diplomatically.

Nanaba's return freed both Levi and Agent Iaso, who by then insisted he drop the code name in private and call her Petra. She knew little more about this intel Erwin was supposedly sitting on than Nanaba, telling Levi that she was ordered only to confirm the accuracy of it's metadata – not the data itself. It was a dead lead.

It didn't matter. With the weight of the Survey Corps off his shoulders, Levi could return to what he did best.

He and Petra located Erwin's pilot from the Panacea incursion with whom Erwin staged the fake crash to draw out Beckert's fire. Gunter Schultz' record was stellar. The man could drive anything on wheels and pilot anything with an engine, including, most importantly, the helidisc. Levi insisted on finding Eld Jinn, too, the agent who had briefed Levi and Erwin on their flight from The Ring. Much of his records were redacted or simply nonexistent – it wouldn't bode well for a corporate spy to just have them lying around – but after some digging on Petra's end, they confirmed his rank and credentials. He was in.

Petra recommended another man, then, her handler on the botched Iaso mission and the one who smoothed over the incident before it reached the courts. Oluo was so loud that the feed crackled whenever he spoke, which was marginally less often than he'd have to nurse his perpetually bitten tongue, but Petra vouched for him, so he was in.

The courts were too slow. A prison break was out of the question.

But Kotze was right. There was another way. Erwin had given him the tinder, he'd put the matches in his hands. Levi needed only to light them.

In three hours, the team was formed. In five, their resources pooled. Staff rotations and executives' schedules from Petra. Helidiscs from Gunter. Intermipol supply lines and power station coordinates from Eld. Reintegration center intel from Oluo. And from Levi, the loyalty of the fledgling Shadow Corps. By the evening of their first day, Intermipol's pressure points were identified and mapped. The missives were written, and Shadow Corps volunteers mobilized.

As they coordinated, an anonymous call started up, though Levi had explicitly ordered that no one contact him but for an emergency. He muted himself and his team and accepted the call.

“Давно не виделись,” Farlan grinned.

Levi huffed in disbelief. “Where the hell were you? You couldn't have called sooner-”

“Yes, _mom_ ,” Farlan drawled. He didn't look hurt. He was smiling. He was okay. Farlan was okay.

“Heard you were up to something,” Farlan said.

“You mean you tapped my calls. Again.”

“Doesn't it make you nostalgic?”

“Sure, if your English is worse than mine and by nostalgic you mean annoyed.”

“Alright, alright, listen, I don't know any details! Just metadata, frequency of calls, that sorta thing. But I know when you're up to something and I happen to be up to something and think maybe we can pool our somethings.”

“How long have you been-”

“We really have been apart too long,” Farlan said and clicked his tongue. “When _haven't_ I tapped your calls?”

Levi was beginning to think this was fate enacting revenge on behalf of Erwin for all the times Levi himself tapped the man's comms.

“Alright,” Levi said. “What do you have?”

“I've outfitted a dozen cities with Firefly. Double digit drops in casualties within days. You remember, the passive infrared network that scans for titans?”

“I'm older than you, not senile.”

“Okay, okay – so – Firefly's in such high demand that that all visa restrictions for my team have been lifted. Some of them can even fly with expired passports. So if there _happens_ to be a city that could benefit from a surge of Survey veterans who _happen_ to have extensive knowledge of the city and are great at organizing crowds-”

“How soon can you be in Munich?”

“We're on our way.”

There were plenty of civilians protesting at Intermipol's headquarters in Munich, but they were fragmented. Disorganized. A will with no way.

It started with fliers. Gunter's team smothered Munich and flew as far south as Rome to deliver them all. Intermipol's stranglehold on the internet meant that information could be removed or manipulated in seconds – not so for physical collateral. It would take longer to confiscate fliers or to print and distribute ones with misinformation. But not too long. They couldn't waste time.

The rally was scheduled for the very next day. Tens of thousands streamed into the city, into Intermipol's compounds News of the protest spread. Their numbers grew. Intermipol filled every holding cell in the city and by doing so, inspired five more to take the place of the first.

Farlan's Survey vets organized the protesters into sit ins across highways and roads, in docking stations and power plants. Petra and Oluo used the United States' deep pockets to reimburse plant workers, operators and truck drivers.

Oluo received reports from his contacts on the inside. Staff couldn't get around protesters. Supplies wouldn't last the week. Backup generators would only hold for several days even if more than half of their facilities were shut down to compensate.

If Intermipol had slain the Survey Corps with a thousand cuts, the Survey Corps answered with a beheading.

Hour by hour, Intermipol was forced to shut down another building. Staff were free to leave, and many did – but no one was allowed to return.

Levi remained on standby well into the morning of the third day with scant hours of sleep in between. If Erwin was scheduled for transport, they will find him, and they will follow him, and they will suffocate his new captors, and the ones after that. Intermipol would not bet their house on one man. Levi let himself feel it. Slowly, cautiously, he let himself feel those first little seeds of optimism.

He shouldn't have bothered.

On the third day, one military chopper after another arrived on the rooftops of Intermipol's reintegration centers, each of their bellies emblazoned with Iaso's name. The pharmaceutical giant Iaso Industries was sending supplies. Food. Generators. Even people, a skeleton staff content to fly over the heads of thousands of protesters to continue operations.

Petra swore quietly as they all watched the live video feed, Petra and Oluo from London, Gunter and Eld from Munich.

“We were so close,” she said.

“We can't maintain this volume,” Gunter added. “People have families, jobs. We can only rotate for so long.”

“Captain,” Eld reported, “We're seeing military buildup at the city outskirts. More than enough to put us down-”

“They'd never fire on-” Uluo sputtered.

“Drop enough tear gas,” Eld argued, “and they won't have to.”

“It'll look bad,” Petra said.

“Maybe not,” Eld said. “For all we know, they could've done it on day one, but chose to make themselves out to look frail, shutting down their compound like that. Maybe even pretending to be low on supplies. Making themselves out to be the underdog.”

“But that's bullshit,” Gunter huffed.

“It's Intermipol.”

Oluo elbowed Petra. “Would people buy that?”

“I think enough time's passed that most people have rooted themselves on one side or another,” she said. “But we weren't doing this to convert fans of Intermipol, this was to-”

“Everyone but Petra,” Levi said, “continue monitoring. Use the emergency line if there's a change. Ral, switch.”

Petra joined a private line between herself and Levi.

“I want every. Speck. Of dirt. You have on Iaso,” he said.

“I could give you mountains of it and it won't do a thing, captain. You can't take on Iaso Industries. Not with our time frame. Hell, not in our lifetimes.”

“I'll take on anyone I want.”

“Captain, please.”

“Iaso owns Panacea. It's not even some fancy satellite company it bought to look good, it's their pride and joy and that tower was a fucking hive. How the fuck are they still in business?”

“Money. Influence.”

Levi curled his fists. He swallowed, hard. They had been so close. “What did we do wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. “We did everything right. Intermipol has powerful friends, captain.”

But so do we, he almost said. Egret, annoying though she was, was a powerful friend, with a powerful boss. Levi recalled the otherworldly tracking tech Erwin had found in the burst innards of the titan they'd come across when they'd escaped The Ring. Egret had admitted it was hers. She'd even given Erwin the other half of the device while Dragunov had used his body. Erwin had given it to Hange, who had slipped it to their Shadow Corps contacts.

An analysis had confirmed it to be a remote-activated explosive that threaded through the host titan by nanobots released by its tendrils. After a few false starts, they had begun mass production a week after the film's drop. The Shadow Corps used it now, needing only to launch it into a titans flesh to begun the threading process. Though threading took hours, titans could simply be corralled until the device was sufficiently integrated, and then, detonated.

Casualties plummeted in the second week. In the third, they dropped still, and at the cusp of the fourth, they hovered just over pre-film levels with no sign of slowing.

One little device did the work of five elite squads. One device spared the lives of millions, tens of millions.

A.T. After Titans. Levi almost wanted to believe it. To believe that it was possible. Egret – Egret's employer, this other Erwin – had made it possible. Despite all their reticence, despite all their hesitations and suspicions and anger, the other Erwin had persisted, had done this much for them.

I'm the jackdaw. Levi wondered if there was a version of him who said those words that night in the forest, a version of him who would have trusted this other Erwin the way he trusted his own. How different the world might have been. This titanium-armed Erwin could have helped them buckle Intermipol. They certainly had no reservations about wanting it gone now. His Erwin might not have even had to release the film. He may have never needed to surrender to Intermipol. He could have been safe. He, like the Survey Corps, could have been free.

“Standby,” Levi ordered Ral, and left the conference room. He drove to the outskirts of the city. He powered up the phone. Egret answered on the second ring.

“I want to talk to Erwin. Your Erwin. And I want to do it my way,” Levi said.

Egret was annoying when she was giddy.

The compromise was as palatable as it would ever be. Their meeting would happen in Johannesburg, in the thick of Survey territory – but Levi was allowed two companions and no more.

He went alone. The risk of anyone but but his strike team and Nanaba being Intermipol moles was too high, and the former two were too valuable to waste on what began to feel increasingly like a last ditch effort. A final card.

Levi threw off his bike helmet and let Egret's agents led him into an old warehouse on the outskirts of the city. His ring monitored his coordinates and his heart rate, and transmitted the information to both Kotze and a nearby strike team. He didn't expect Egret to be so stupid as to attempt to abduct him or force Dragunov out in a city where you couldn't throw a stone without it hurtling past a Survey vet or Shadow agent, but he wasn't about to invite her to birthday parties or write her into his will either.

He was left to sit in a room empty but for two chairs, one wooden, another padded and lined with restraints. In the interest of getting it over with, Levi insisted they begin the moment Egret touched down from wherever it was she and her cabal ran their own operations. Levi's tracking teams had come up with nothing. This way, at the very least, they'd be able to follow her on her way out.

Egret pushed her way into the room before Levi had even bent to take his seat. She gave him a passing pat on the shoulder before throwing herself into the padded chair and drumming her fingers on the armrests.

“Ready?”

Levi canted his head. “You sure you're Egret? Not like you to actually get to the point.”

“Tight schedule for both of us, birdie.” She watched a technician strap her in while another wriggled into a pair of gloves and withdrew a clear formula into a syringe. A modest five-man guard stood at Levi's back, but given her position, he couldn't blame her for wanting insurance.

“This is the same stuff we used on you – or, tried to use on you, way back when in New York. Do you still have that BM-90? It's a very nice rifle- what's with the face?”

Levi debated whether it was wise to answer honestly. He tried to keep his hands from wandering to the knives strapped into his jacket and thighs. “Wondering why you'd agree to do it. This way, I mean. Not the other way around.”

She scoffed as the technician prepared her arm. “Your space-twin ain't a riot on my side either. Any chance to avoid him, I take. Can't blame you for wanting the same.”

“I get why Erwin – your Erwin – would hate him,” he said, remembering at once the bloom of red mist in the wind and the touch of cool titanium at his – at Dragunov's – nape. “What is he to you, the rest of you, then?”

Egret looked at him, then at the floor, unsure, too, if she should be candid. “Let's just say Mr. Smith sees something in him the rest of us can't really parse. But hey, guess what?” she said, chipper now. “You could ask him yourself.”

“How's this gonna work?”

“Birdie, you got any idea why those three little words switched you so easily?”

He had. He'd come to no answer. “I only know how to stop an involuntary switch. Or slow it, anyway. Sharp pain or...or a contradiction-”

“Bingo. Smith can bore you with the details, but all you need to know for this switcheroo is if you can program the right verbal trigger into one Egret,” she said, holding up a finger from where her wrists were clamped down, “and get the other to say it,” she went on, raising her pointer finger with her other hand, “it'll switch em. And vice-versa. Compound makes it easier. Why it does that, I couldn't explain with a gun to my head. Too many big words.”

Hange could explain it. But it would be too obvious of him to develop a sudden fascination in biochemistry to squeeze the name of it out of her. One thing at a time.

“And this trigger thing could work for just anyone?” Levi asked instead.

“Oh no, no,” Egret said. The technician stood at her side, waiting. “Takes years to install a trigger like that. Nonstop conditioning. No guarantee it'll work, either. Real experimental shit. But Mr. Smith insisted. And Levi – our Levi – well, he didn't have much of a choice,” she said, but the words trailed, as if daring him to suggest otherwise.

She wanted dirt on Dragunov. Maybe even dirt on her Erwin. It wasn't too great a shock – Levi had felt the bruises and sores from how violently they had to – or wanted to – handle Dragunov on that rooftop. He could be reaching, but if there was a real rift between Egret and Dragunov, if one was actively sabotaging the other like Levi was beginning to suspect Dragunov of doing when he threatened Levi without Egret's knowledge, then it was in Levi's interest to understand how he might use it to his advantage.

On the other hand, they could also be playing classic good cop, bad cop. Maybe it was working. Levi had agreed to meet her, after all.

“Cold feet?” Egret asked, watching him too carefully.

“Don't be stupid. You're the one strapped in and going for a ride. Why are you strapped in, again?”

“You know what it feels like to cross over. Suffocating. Feels like you're-”

“Drowning.”

Egret gave him a thumbs up. The leather restraint creaked. “Nasty thing to fall on your ass. That and you get the occasional seizure. Nice to not bang your head on reentry. Well, ask away, birdie, and I'll-”

A knock interrupted them. The door swung open and one of Egret's men walked in, tablet in hand.

“Apologies, ma'am. You should see this.”

“What's up?” Egret asked, and nodded to the technicians to release her. The agent glanced at Levi. “He can stay,” Egret said. “I mean it, Levi,' she said to him. “No secrets.”

The man nodded and turned the tablet around. The video had paused on a still image of Erwin. “Today's transmission,” he said.

Levi frowned. “You interrupted us just for-” But then he saw it. In the paused footage, Erwin was outside now, not indoors, and members of the Intermipol board stood behind him, recognizable by their black and white banded collars.

Something else was different. There were no shadows in his eyes, no crackle in his voice. His eyes shined. The ends of them crinkled. His mouth curled into an easy smile.

Levi stood, snatched the tablet from the agent's hands and resumed the feed.

“-so it is with great humility that I accept your offer to join the executive board of the International Military Police,” Erwin said. “I am honored to be able to give back to this organization which so selflessly persisted in rehabilitating me even when, in my profound ignorance and callous self-interest, I resisted. I denounce my prior activities against the noble efforts of the International Military Police to maintain peace and enforce the rule of law in such a critical period of human history. Titans will not wait until our divisions have healed. Titan-worshiping radicals will not stand by while we squabble over the imagined injustices of the few while the very real tragedies of the many continue unopposed.”

The board applauded.

He went on. “I denounce the Survey Corps Independence Project. I denounce the film which I, at the height of my sickened delusions, crafted with the intention of deliberately distorting the honorable record and exemplary service of the International Military Police. I implore all Survey agents to return to their posts and heed the instruction of your local Intermipol overseers, who have nothing but your well-being in mind-”

The tablet slipped out of his hands. Levi couldn't hear the clatter it against the floor for the ringing in his ears, couldn't hear anything at all. He reached blindly for his chair. A century might have passed in the time it took his limbs to obey and sit him down.

Egret waved away her agent, the technicians, even the guards. She picked up the tablet, shut it off, and returned to her seat, chewing her lip into pulp. She didn't speak.

He didn't know how long they remained there, how long they shared the silence. How long it preserved them, suspended them. Flies in amber.

Egret cleared her throat. “We'll. We'll test it for frame irregulari-”

“It's real,” Levi said, and if she hadn't stopped, he was sure the silence had swallowed his too-small words. He was sure the whole world was ringing. The whole world was ringing. The world was ringing.

“Still, it helps to-”

“It's real,” he said again. He curled his hands to see if they were real, too. To see if he never needed Dragunov to kill Erwin after all. To bury all that Erwin was and all that he could have been.

“He looked happy,” Levi said. “I've never seen him so happy.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates will be every two weeks from now on, maybe sooner. Final stretch.


	19. The Lamb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [ TNBH: Wires](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwcZ81SftVw&ab_channel=AddedtotheAir)

 

Mike rubbed dust and grime from his eyes, though he didn't remember being caked in this much. He rolled over before what felt an awful lot like jagged rock pressed any further between his ribs and sat up. It was dark. Stifling, too.

He had woken up in a cave.

As he oriented himself, he was certain he had been carried at one point. Had heard voices, some snide, some spooked. Many garbled, as if passing through water.

There were provisions strewn around him, but they weren't his own. They looked nothing like his own. They also didn't look as if they had been thrown his way in something approximating mercy when his abductors abandoned him, as it appeared they had – the cave was otherwise empty.

But they were familiar. The canteens. The ropes. The grappling hooks. The dust that clung to every inch of it all.

He stepped outside into the whipping wind. The dust was so dense that he could barely make out his own hands. And when he did, he noticed something else. Rather, a lack of something. His ring was gone.

Mike circled back to the provisions. He tossed the contents of a bag onto the cavern floor and sifted through its notes and journals. Noted the handwriting. Noted the dates.

He tried to think of a contradiction, though even before he started, he knew it was moot. He had never been able to move of his own will before, not in this world. This wasn't his world. This wasn't earth as he knew it, and it wasn't the year 2091.

He'd been too careless. He needed to get back. He needed to go home.

 

*

 

Hange had tried everything. Beckert knew next to nothing, and even that was a generous thought. It made sense – she had been a sleeper agent, in so deep that she and Foley hadn’t even risked communicating with their handlers for fear of capture. But Hange wasn't interested in that alone. They wanted what Beckert knew about Kronos. All of it.

 _All of it_ wasn't much. It sounded more like a fairy-tale with the way she spoke of it or her or him, like a boogeyman. Every story contradicted itself. Every anecdote was undone by the next. Hange had half a mind to think Beckert was running them in circles.

Still, Hange had an eye for insincerity. Beckert didn't know.

But Hange knew. Not real-world Hange. Dome Hange. Space Hange. Narrowly-escaped-from-certain-death Hange. The Hange who had spoken with Dome Levi – they really needed to work out what to call each other – about Kronos as if they'd known the name for years, had encountered it before. The Hange to whom Dome Erwin had confided in, divulged to them the things he'd seen in his head, the growing whispers at the edge of his conscious mind. The Hange who had been so disturbed by what Erwin told them that they agreed to cut him and Levi open so that Erwin would not face a faceless devil alone. The Hange who saved the two from certain death by installing overcharge buffers in their own head, and in Mike's.

Nanaba had interrupted their call before Hange could entirely parse Levi's reaction, but what little they saw had seemed sincere. He'd looked appropriately shocked when Hange insinuated that he and Erwin might have more to do with these dreams than they let on. Maybe they did. Or maybe neither Levi nor Erwin have the barest idea how.

Hange needed to go back. They needed to dream again.

Moblit all but forbid it. Halcion wasn't the answer. There was nothing they could do until Hange, Levi, Mike and Erwin could reunite, until Intermipol was defeated, until Erwin was released and Mike found. There was nothing else to do but to bide their time. To wait. Always to wait.

After a little persuading, Charlie succeeded in securing the DOD's clearance for Hange and Moblit to communicate remotely – and more importantly, privately – with Shadow and Survey research teams. The device Hange emphatically elected to name The Threader was making its rounds through the ranks of titan hunters the world over. Casualties plummeted.

It should have been enough. It wasn't.

Hange played the footage of Iaso's choppers all day and into the night. Watched Intermipol's white knights swoop in to save the day. Moblit stayed up with Hange to watch it, and only made a pointed observation about self-flagellation once or twice. Beckert had locked herself in her room. Hange couldn't taste their dinner.

Hange goaded Charlie into bringing them any and all unclassified records on Iaso and Panacea. He stayed in the apartment while Hange leafed through them, at which point Hange was certain there was something in there he was sure they wouldn't like. And there was something in there Hange really, really didn't like.

The United States was funding Iaso Industries.

It wasn't a shock, not even news – but the digits behind the dollar sign and the clear-as-day confirmation wasn't endearing Hange to their temporary employers, nor making it any easier to avoid accidentally thinking of them as captors.

“Don't,” Charlie said immediately, hands already in the air, placating, “Panacea is still under investigation. Don't forget, it's only been a month – you folks want a sloppy case on your hands?”

“Panacea gets more attention and funding from Iaso than any of its daughter companies by _miles_ -”

“He's right, Hange,” Moblit said from the kitchen island where he steeped tea for Charlie. “We need a good case more than we need a fast one.”

“And don't forget,” Charlie said, looking like he wanted dearly to believe he wasn't pushing his luck, “Iaso does a hell of a lot more than make itself look bad with this little partnership of theirs with Intermipol. Their miracles in pharmaceuticals alone-”

“Didn't know miracles cost an arm and a leg,” Hange said.

“That's not my call-”

“What _is_ your call?” Hange snapped. Footage from the Panacea incursion was playing on the television again. Charlie edged toward the remote on the counter. Hange grabbed it and tossed it out of his reach.

Charlie's mouth drew into a thin line. He thanked Moblit for the tea as Moblit took Hange's hand out of their mouth. Their nails were down to stubs.

“I'm your friend,” Charlie said without heat, without implication. He looked years older. “Is my department keeping up appearances with Intermipol just to give Survey a fighting chance? Or is it giving Survey false confidence just to make their eventual fall even sweeter? I don't know. Could be both, could be neither. I don't know. I sincerely do not know. The truth is usually-”

“In between,” Hange muttered. “Yeah. I think it is.”

I think your department is playing both sides and claiming the prize for whoever comes out the victor, Hange didn't say.

“We have to do something,” Hange said when Charlie left.

“We are,” Moblit said. “The Threader-”

“It's not enough.”

“I think saving millions of lives is something, Hange,” he said hotly. He muted the TV.

Hange turned, frowning. “Since when do you get off not addressing me as Officer?”

Moblit's eyes widened, stricken. “I-I didn't-”

Hange snorted and patted him on the back as they crossed into the next room. “Can't believe that worked. Loosen up.”

Would that Hange could take their own advice. Would that they hadn't seen the man who saved them from reintegration succumb to it himself. Would that they hadn't watched a strange man give their friend's obituary from his own body.

Hange didn't watch the news coverage. The television was off this time, and the apartment was silent. The traitorous sky remained blue as if the world simply kept on turning without Erwin in it. Every note of birdsong was a betrayal, every cheery face a slap in the face.

Beckert avoided them even more so than usual. Where she would usually wait to wheel out of her room to eat when Hange and Moblit were in the next room, now she waited until past midnight when she was sure they were asleep.

Hange came out of their room that night. Beckert froze where she had wheeled herself into the kitchen to, by the looks of it, make a pretty meager sandwich. Hange trudged over and opened the fridge.

“Don't eat stale junk,” Hange said at the bread on Beckert's plate. Her swallow was audible, and Hange wondered if she was even breathing under the imperial hum of the fridge in the otherwise silent room. Hange took out leftovers from a decent Thai place a few doors down and heated them. Beckert huddled in on herself in her chair and watched the bowl revolve in the microwave with startled, owlish eyes.

When it finished with a final beep, Hange remained where they stood. Beckert huddled into herself even more, and Hange didn't want to know what she was expecting.

“You didn't do that,” they said of the press conference, of Erwin. “We don't blame you.”

Beckert only looked down.

“Lotta blame to go around, but you – you're just a foot soldier. Wrong place, wrong time, that kinda thing. Though in your case, I'd tack on wrong universe.”

They took out the bowl and placed it on the coffee table. After some deliberation, Beckert wheeled herself over and moved herself onto the couch.

“It just hit me,” Hange said, not knowing exactly where they were going but knowing they had to get there, somehow. “We're not that different. Your mission was to protect Erwin. Even if….” Hange laughed hollowly, “even if your handler or their boss or their boss's boss wanted him alive for some less than innocent reason, you couldn't have known that. I've trained sleepers agents. We don't tell 'em shit they don't need to know. Makes the job easier. The less they gotta compartmentalize, the better.”

Beckert blew on her spoon.

“Three years. Hell, you – your cover's been blown since Panacea but after so long...must still feel like you failed.”

Beckert nodded.

“Almost wish I was you right now. Least for you it was a job. Even if you liked the guy, I know I train my sleepers to separate th- their- the-” Hange cleared their throat. Deciding they didn't want to tower over her anymore, they fell into the couch beside Beckert. She wasn't startled, didn't edge away anymore. That was good.

“That coulda been me, Beck,” Hange said thickly. “Coulda been me in there. And I almost- almost let it happen. Didn't see another way. He showed me another way. Showed me I could do more. He'd always. Always know how to bring out the best in. In people, you know? Is he like that? Your Er- your boss?”

Beckert swallowed her food. “Yeah. Sounds just like Mr. Smith. Mine, I mean.”

“I guess I am, in a way,” Hange said.

“You did everything ri-”

“No. I could've done more,” Hange said. “I could've...could've been better. Faster. Maybe if we'd taken a right turn instead of a left, we'd have… We'd have escaped and I could've been in Johannesburg to throttle Levi and. And make him – oh. Levi.”

Levi. He must have seen the footage. A whole day's gone by and he hadn't called. Nanaba had left a message, promised to call as soon as they field the avalanche of reactions from the Survey and Shadow Corps, make sure no one does anything stupid in retaliation. But Levi.

“Stupid,” Hange said, laughing hollowly. They didn't bother to pretend not to see what had been happening right in front of them. Hange had seen the footage from The Ring. They destroyed it afterward. But they had seen it.

“Were they close?” Beckert asked.

“How close are your Erwin and Levi?” Hange said, meaning to make a point but suddenly curious.

“Close, I guess. They met under…unique circumstances.”

“Assassination.”

Beckert's eyes widened. “How-”

“Something about my dreams give me this...this weird capacity, I guess,” Hange said. “I can process things so much faster, so much easier. Can recognize patterns, put things together faster. Didn't take long to figure why Levi was getting weird around Erwin about the time the dreams started.” And after watching the footage from The Ring, Hange's hypothesis was all but confirmed. “And not in the fun way, either.”

“There's a fun way?”

There was. The kind where ears reddened. When powerful men stuttered like teenagers. And maybe Levi had been weird about Erwin in the fun way, too.

Maybe that almost-kiss had everything to do with disorientation from coming out of a vision. Or maybe it didn't. Maybe the truth was somewhere in between.

Hange wondered what Levi was doing then, at that very moment. What he must be thinking. What he must be trying not to think, not to feel. Feelings weren't in the job description.

Action was. They had waited too long.

They had done nothing while Erwin wasted away, while he was being drained of all that he was. Levi's protest stunt was too little, too late. It wasn't enough. Half-measures weren't enough.

Hange put Beckert to bed and walked into their own bedroom. They watched Moblit shifting in his own bed, opposite Hange's. He couldn't be here when Hange did it. Moblit was well-intentioned, but he could be just as short-sighted.

In the morning, Hange convinced Charlie to allow Moblit to leave the apartment for the day to inspect a joint Survey-Shadow research facility a few states over.

“I'll call,” Moblit said as Hange saw him out. They were sure he would. They'd rigged an AI to answer in Hange's voice. Mike outdid himself with these rings.

As they turned away to head into their bedroom, Hange caught Beckert at their own door.

“Just gonna work on something for a while,” Hange said, walking past her, “Don't interrupt, answer the door if you see a badge, yada yada-”

“You don't have enough.”

Hange stopped. “Enough what?”

She didn't answer.

Hange turned toward Beckert. They took a step forward. “What's up?”

Beckert sat back in her chair.

“Berner told me-”

“What did he tell you?” Hange said, prowling still closer. She wouldn't ruin this. Hange had one shot. They would do it if they had to chain Beckert to her bed again.

“To make sure you didn't do anything stupid,” she said. She took her hand out of her sweatshirt pockets. An unmarked bottle of white tablets rattled in her palm.

“Took a peek in your bag on the helicopter over. You don't have enough to go under. Not when you've stopped dreaming on your own.”

“So your reaction,” Hange said, playing at staying calm, “to 'Make sure Hange doesn't do anything stupid' is to give me unmarked drugs you somehow got past our searches?”

“I'm giving you a choice. Too few and nothing happens. Too many and you'll overdose.”

“And you just happen to know how many-” Hange stopped. Of course she knew. She would have needed to know in case she needed to switch and communicate with the other side immediately. In her place, Hange wouldn't have dreamed of accepting an assignment without an emergency line.

“Listen, kid, one little heartfelt chat doesn't mean I'm about to just-”

“I'm not telling you what to do,” Beckert said. She wheeled herself into the living room and placed the bottle on the coffee table.

“Full disclosure,” Becket said as she wheeled herself back to her room, “those combine Halcion with longer lasting benzodiazepines. One dose in there. Halcion knocks you out, the others make you stay out.”

“How long?”

“Dunno. Handler didn't tell me.”

Hange laughed. This was insane. “So you're, what, assuming I'm desperate enough to take them, knock myself out and then, what? You bust outta here in your chair? Get past the seven locks you can't reach, the passcodes you don't know, race past the guards outside?”

“Sounds crazy, doesn't it?” Beckert said, stopping at her door and turning around.

“Yeah. So you'd better- you'd better-”

“Take them back? Not supposed to have 'em in the first place.”

“So you want to pin this on me. That's your play. That I confiscated them and then just couldn't help myself.”

Beckert rested her chin on the back of her chair. She looked so young, doing that. Hange wondered how old you had to be to sign up to hop universes.

“I want to know what Kronos is, too.”

Hange opened their mouth. Closed it.

“Don't look so surprised. You ask about it more than anything else. I studied your Greek mythology. Kronos, king of all the titans, right? Don't you think I would want to know, too? Don't you think Erwin would have wanted to know?”

“How can I trust a word you say? After everything you've done?”

“You can't,” Beckert said. She shrugged. “Keep waiting, then. At least when Intermipol wins and reintegrates you, it won't hurt anymore.” Beckert wheeled inside and shut the door with a soft click.

Hange threw themselves into the couch in front of the lonely bottle. They could wait. They could keep tinkering with this or that. They could go on coordinating with a Survey/Shadow research team whenever no one else could spare a moment. They could keep ignoring an advantage of interdimensional weight in the name of – what? Safety? They weren't in this line of work to be safe. This was no less dangerous than riding between the swinging legs of stampeding titans. At the moment, they weren't even integral to the Independence effort. They couldn't be. It was too risky to coordinate anything of substance from behind the DOD.

So Hange could wait. Watch the evening news. Sweep the apartment for bugs that somehow keep reappearing while agents on the ground risk their lives. While a dead man walks with Erwin's gait, speaks with Erwin's voice.

Hange grabbed the bottle and locked the bedroom door behind them. They had tried this only once before with little to show for it but half a day kneeling over the porcelain throne and the other half unable to eat anything or even speak without slurring. Moblit had been livid. Hange had never seen that shade of red on him. He'd thrown out what he assumed was the rest of Hange's Halcion and made sure they heard him contact their requisitions officer and forbid them from bringing a single item into the flat without his oversight. And not one dream out of the entire ordeal. Not a glimpse.

But Hange hadn't been able to sleep long enough to dream. Barely an hour had passed before the roiling in their gut forced them out of bed. If this was Beckert's emergency line, and if it was designed to put the user out long enough to establish contact, it would be irresponsible not to use it. By accident or by design or a little of both, Hange had been given something special, something strange, and giving it up when it became a teeny bit harder to access would be an insult to the Survey Corps. An insult to Erwin.

 

*

 

The fallout was catastrophic. Erwin pledged to testify at a hearing in the following week prior to officially assuming his post on Intermipol's executive board. The world was stunned. Each faction clamored. Survey supporters cried brainwash. Intermipol loyalists accepted Erwin's admission on its face.

Morale plummeted.

Then Moblit called in, apoplectic. Hange was in a coma.

Beckert was questioned by DOD agents and placed into isolation after admitting to have smuggled in the pills Hange had taken. The Department of Defense feared retaliation from the already incensed Survey and Shadow Corps and agreed to release Moblit and fly Hange to a Survey division ward. Beckert, however, would remain in their custody. Th decision was final. There was no negotiation.

Levi flew to Munich with Egret. He forbid a single Survey agent to join him. He would not give her any more potential hostages to make eyes at.

He enlisted instead every last Silvers man and woman who'd served under him and who had survived the fatal radical incursion on their leadership so many months ago. The courthouse where Erwin was scheduled to testify was located and bugged, and their staff infiltrated. The Silvers agents had never been involved with Survey activity in any capacity, so even if they were captured, their records would never incriminate the Corps.

And anyway – Levi was only observing.

He and Egret took the roof opposite the courthouse on the day of the hearing. Every so-called day between the press conference and this hearing had lasted a thousand years.

Levi watched the crowd swell, watched the blinding flicker and flash of cameras, heard the howl of protesters and the growing chants of _Bring Him Home_ by Survey sympathizers. Egret sat nearby, cross-legged, and tapped into the cameras and transceivers inside.

“So,” Egret started for the fifth time that afternoon. “Any time you wanna let me in on the plan-”

“Observe. That's it,” Levi said.

Egret sucked in a breath and blew it out with an obnoxious sound. She slid down the parapet and watched on their tablet as Intermipol's board members took their seats in the courtroom.

Levi looked away as the crowd roared at the newest arrival. He didn't want to see the car door open. To see the sun catch gold. To watch a dead man walking.

“You must have some hope,” Egret said again. “Otherwise we wouldn't be here-”

“We're here so I can shut you up,” Levi said. “So we can bury this and move on.”

“He's not dead.”

“Isn't he? Didn't you say, before, that you knew what they were doing to him? That you had people on the inside who reported to you? Must not have been that bad, then, if you think that man isn't a walking corpse.”

“He refused help.”

Levi turned to her. “What?”

Egret looked grim. “We had two people on the inside close enough to his ward. Hell, they prepped an entire wing just for him. Dozens of rooms. Real VIP shit. 'Bout two weeks in, one of ours made contact. Let him know he had an out. He refused.”

“And you-” Levi stopped. Was he really about to snap at her for not doing more, when he himself had waited this long, too long?

“They were caught after that,” Egret went on. “Security's tighter than we'd ever imagined. They thought they'd taken down the bugs before contacting him, but…well. Let's just say Intermipol isn't too popular on my end either.”

“How many of yours do they have?”

“Dozens. Hundreds, if you count em up over the years.”

“And you just took it? Why wait for us to pull the trigger if they were such a menace?”

“Menace isn't exactly right. Inconvenience, maybe. You forget - just teaching our guys your customs and histories takes years. It's worse than it sounds, because we do share a few things. Landmass, obviously. Linguistic roots. A lotta cultural and religious convergences. But it's fucked up, like you took our history and threw it in a blender. Or the other way around. Or both, I dunno. Point is, we really, really don't have people to spare.” Egret cycled through their hidden cameras to find the one pointed on the stand where Erwin would speak. “We try to help any way we can.”

“Well aren't you just a cabal of altruists.”

“Nah, we're selfish through and through. Helping a whole universe purge titans?” She leaned in conspiratorially. “Can you imagine the press?”

“No. Not really.”

Egret grinned and turned back to the live feed. Levi watched the crowds dissipate outside.

“What's he like?” Levi asked before he could stop himself.

“Hm?”

“Erwin. Your Erwin.”

She tsked. “Shame you two never got to chat. Maybe after all this. Well, he's...secretive to a fault. Working with him's like lighting a fire under your own ass. Odd hours, not a lot of vacation time, the pension plan needs some serious work-” She laughed at Levi's pointed look. “He's also kind, thoughtful, hilarious in a way you'd never expect from a guy so uptight. Cares about his agents. Would sooner move a river than pass it by if it was the right thing to do.”

“Sounds familiar,” Levi said, and if his voice was a little lower, a touch harsher, Egret said nothing of it.

Erwin was taking the stand. Intermipol had intimated all week long that they were ready to drop all charges and accept their former opponent, the greatest opponent in its history, into their ranks. The hearing was nearly as informal as a press conference, to that effect. Erwin had only to say his piece, and he was theirs.

Levi glanced at Egret's tablet. He did a double take. That wasn't the same Erwin that had given that press conference.

Egret frowned. “Your man looks...nervous.”

Levi's heart started a jackhammer beat. “Erwin's never nervous. Not like that. Why would- why would he look so nervous? They had him. They-”

He stopped.

Egret met his eye, her own wide, unbelieving. “Maybe not,” she said.

“My name is Erwin Smith, former commander and president of the Survey Corps.” Levi turned back to the tablet. Sweat shone at Erwin's temples and across his neck.

“The International Military Police has offered me a prestigious position within the ranks of their leadership given my record at the helm of the titan-hunting organization, and despite my antagonism toward their organization.”

His skin paled in the courtroom lights, his hair dulled. But, his eyes.

“Antagonism which, after this long, illuminating month within their reintegration center, I have found-“

They weren’t a corpse's eyes.

“-was not just well-deserved-”

They were Erwin's.

“-but dearly necessary given their deliberate and intimate relationship with titan-worshipping radicals.”

He did not give the courtroom the time to devolve into their frenzied whispers, though how dearly it wanted to.

“Are you recording this?” Levi breathed.

“Yeah,” Egret said, shoving the tablet into his hands and checking her signal with shaking hands.

“I have in my possession,” Erwin went on, “a trove of documents linking present and former members of the International Military Police to every radical incursion taken place in the past quarter century, and if,” he said, eying the executive board members whispering feverishly to security guards, “I am not allowed to finish, I will release it to the public all at once.”

A hush stole every breath in the courtroom.

“Wait,” Levi said. “Don't broadcast it.”

“What? Why-”

“Not yet.”

The presiding judge addressed him, condescension pouring out of him. “Clearly we have more work to do. Let's dispense with these fantasies, Mr. Smith. You've been held for over a month without contact with the outside-

“I agree, Judge Drecker. Who better to judge the veracity of my claims than you, who accepted over five hundred thousand Euro in March, June, and November of 2078 from executive board member George Feriday to rule in favor of Intermipol despite overwhelming evidence of their involvement in the 2077 Singapore incursion? Mister Feriday, as I recall,” Erwin said to an ashen faced man in the pews, “that incursion was engineered to frighten the Singaporean government into signing a land deal which coincidentally bolstered your son's failing real estate business. Please send Mark my regards.”

The man couldn't speak for his gaping mouth. Erwin didn't wait for him.

He gripped the stand podium, white knuckled. “I will make this perfectly simple. For every hour that passes in which the Survey Corps is not granted permanent and universal independence from the International Military Police, one name will be released to the public along with substantial evidence of their collusion with titan-worshiping terrorists. And this list begins, Mr. Feriday, with you.”

The man rose, red-faced and shaking bodily. “You snake. You lying bastard. All this time – that press conference-”

“Was as genuine as your commitment to the betterment of humanity.”

“Now, hold on,” said another of the executive board. “What say we-”

“Order!-”

“Oh shut up, Drecker,” Feriday spat.

Another started up. “We don't even know if he's even got what he says he's got-”

“This pain in my ass, this fucking leech? Whole month of integration and he can still fucking string words together, let alone this shit? Fuck,” Feriday spat. He raked his hands through his thinning hair. “Let them go.”

The courtroom erupted.

“We can't just--”

“Now hold on-”

“But only-” Feriday started, rounding on Erwin, “if my name stays out of it.”

“That's entirely out of my hands, Mister Feriday. As of twenty seconds ago.”

The man deflated. “Fuck. _Fuck_ \- Paul, draft it, address it to commander Nanaba and sign it. All of you. Hand-fucking-write it if you have to, or you're next. Isn't that right, Smith?” Feriday spat.

“Actually, Sophia Klein is next,” Erwin said mildly. The woman beside Feriday paled.

“New York,” Erwin said, “is dying to know the name of the woman who engineered a terrorist incursion in downtown Manhattan.”

Levi watched with Egret as the more than dozen members of Intermipol's executive board lined up to sign the document granting independence to the Survey Corps. That single, flimsy page was all they needed. All they had fought for. One hastily drafted page signed by racketeers and terrorists. Egret shoved him amiably.

“Chin up, birdie. He did it, you're free!”

Levi watched Erwin leave the stand as all pretense of a legal hearing in the courtroom dissolved.

Something wasn't right. This meant that, excepting Feriday, this trove Erwin had sat on, had risked his life, his very mind for, was now useless. The terms were simple. Survey's independence in exchange for silence. The Survey Corps was freed, but Intermipol, rotten as it was, would live on. And that wasn't all.

How is he even coordinating this? How did Erwin know when the documents would be ready from the inside?

He didn't have long to wonder. He and Egret watched Feriday present the document with a manufactured smile.

“Now, if you'll excuse me, Mr. Smith,” Feriday said, “Your little stunt necessitates that I take a nice, long vacation until all this nonsense dies dow-”

Erwin tore the document into pieces.

“I confront you with your crimes and instead of pledging to right your wrongs, to seek redemption, you attempt to buy your freedom,” Erwin said.

“What are you-” Feriday sputtered.

“I never needed your signatures. I need nothing from a terrorist organization. The Severance Package is already public.”

Erwin looked directly into the camera hidden between slats in the join of the wall and ceiling on the opposite end of the courtroom as the executive board members reached desperately for their phones. He looked directly at Levi and Egret. “And so is this conversation.”

“Release it now,” Levi said.

“Wh-”

“Now, upload the footage now,” Levi snapped. His blood rushed in his ears. He knew. Erwin knew. He'd seen the hidden cameras, he'd known he'd have an audience, known he'd have support.

Levi placed a call.

“Boss.”

“Nikita,” Levi said, “Get him out of there.”

“Без проблем,” Nikita said.

Levi watched one of his former lieutenants – posing as a security guard – signal the others to surround Erwin.

“What are you-” the judge blustered. “Stop!”

Levi had replaced every security guard on every rotation on that day with his own agents. The judge's bluster went unanswered.

Levi watched Nikita whisper something to Erwin. Erwin nodded and followed him as the others closed around his back and held back an exploding Feriday.

“Ooh,” Egret said as the footage uploaded. “What'd you tell your buddy to say to Erwin? You tell him he's one of Jackdaw's or something?”

Levi sincerely tried not to freeze so obviously.

“Oh my god,” Egret gushed. “You did. I am so, _so_ flattered-”

“Shut up,” Levi said without heat. Erwin was out of the courtroom. Soon, he would be walking out of the courthouse. He would be a free man.

His phone exploded.

_Just got word – UN plans to disband Intermipol in emergency session early as tomorrow. He did it. He actually did it. Get back ASAP. Need you to coordinate merge of Survey and Shadow. - Nanaba_

_Hange still under. Charlie heard the news. Wants to talk about Beckert. Immediately. - Moblit_

_Severance Package picked up by every network. Most are going through documents live. Calls coming in nonstop. Mr. Smith did not prep me for this. What is the Survey Corps' official response? - Nifa_

_Severance Package targets Iaso execs too – almost all of them. how much do we want to anger Iaso? - Ral_

_Radical incursions rising rapidly. News of Severance Package whipped them up. Attacks are random and unplanned – looks like leadership collapse. Please advise. -Kotze_

Levi ignored them. No one had his attention before Erwin was safe.

At last, Erwin emerged outside with Levi's contingent shielding him from the raucous crowd that gathered outside since the release of the Severance Package. Blessedly, they were overwhelmingly supporters who even cleared the way for Erwin who had, to Levi's eye, begun to lean a little too heavily on Nikita as they made their way to the armored Survey car.

Supporters roared as the car door shut. Levi placed another call as it left the courthouse.

“Boss.”

“Report.”

“Not good, boss.”

Levi grit his teeth. “What?”

He heard the shuffling of the phone being given to another.

Sasha, his former strike team medic, answered. “He's catatonic, Levka. Whatever he did in there, it took everything out of him.”

“Out of- Put him on.”

“He can't even hold a ph-”

“Hold it for him,” Levi snapped. When the shuffling lessened, he swallowed thickly. “Erwin. It's Levi. Say something.”

Silence.

“This– this Severance Package, why did you wait so long? Why- was it not ready before? Who released it? How-”

He heard shuffling again. “Levi,” Sasha said, “He's not even moving. He needs medical attention.”

Levi strained to hear over the line. Erwin was saying something.

“What is he saying?”

“Levi-”

He heard it then. Pleading. Erwin doesn't beg. Erwin never begs.

_Take me back. Please, I've made a mistake. Intermipol. Take me back to Intermipol. Please._

_Take me back. Take me back. Take me back._

“Lev,” Sasha said, spooked, “I'm sedating him. He needs serious help.”

Levi listened to the tinny scuffle, white-knuckled.

_Take me back. Take me back. Take me back._

“Take him to the Munich Survey division,” Levi said. “They'll fly him to New York for deprogramming.”

“Понятно. I'm sorry, Lev.”

The line cut. Levi slid down the parapet. Hundreds of miles away, and again, he was a fly in amber.

Egret shifted next to him. “If you need any-”

“No. Not from you.”

She nodded. “My guys will try greasing the DOD for Beckert. The second she's ours, Isabel and Jones are on a flight to Johannesburg.”

Levi opened his mouth to reply. He couldn't summon the will to actually speak.

Egret nodded as if he had. And then she was gone.

Nanaba rang soon after, when Levi thought to turn on his phone again. He held it to his ear with stiff fingers. He listened without really hearing.

“-and you waited as long as we needed,” she said. “As long as Erwin needed, without even knowing his plan. Like it's some kinda- shit, like you can read each other's minds or something. You did good, Levi. You did everything right.”

_Take me back. Take me back. Take me back._

Levi couldn't disagree more.

 

In one week, Survey's chief deprogramming specialist requested Levi's presence in New York. Levi refused.

Hange was stable, but still out cold. The Survey Corps was freed. In an emergency session, the U.N. stripped Intermipol of all its powers and jurisdiction as the Severance Package unfolded, and allowed the Survey Corps independence in a near-unanimous decision. The Shadow Corps had begun the process of integrating with Survey. Nile was the first Intermipol chief to testify against Intermipol and in Erwin's favor.

There was no busier, no more important, time in the history of the Survey Corps, and Levi was benched. Forced vacation, Nanaba called it, though Levi preferred it be named something more fitting, like Purgatory.

He wasn't allowed to work. He refused to return to New York. He'd flown there on the very next flight after Erwin's and had not even stepped within the same room before the hallucinations started again.

So it was a matter of distance after all.

The deprogrammer insisted that he come. Levi almost wished he hadn't placed Survey's premier doctor to helm Erwin's case, or he might have had more luck arguing with her. She was convincing. Erwin's case was at once typical of reintegration victims, but with a caveat that she admitted would have intrigued her had it not also been the source of the failure of every one of their treatments.

Intermipol conditioned old memories or planted new ones. But they weren't stupid. They wouldn't plant something baldly outrageous – like memories about a childhood within three walls.

Levi swore when he got off the phone. Of course Erwin would begin dreaming too. Even after flying back to Johannesburg, red mist lingered in his own periphery. Once again, he started awake to the sound of a rifle shot only he could hear. It had taken weeks for them to abate and one moment of almost-contact to return them in all their intensity.

And Levi had been so preoccupied with the return of his own that he hadn't realized what it would do to Erwin to parse not just the purée Intermipol had made of his memories, but another set of memories entirely.

Maybe it was naive to think moving him from one white room and into another would fix this. Fix him. Like he was a machine in need of a tune up, software in need of debugging. Pieces that could be glued back together if only they could find the right kind of glue.

Levi flew to New York.

They had put Erwin in a room that looked like his old bedroom, except it wasn't. There were two outlets, not three. The dresser was too short and a shade too dark. The false window, an inch too wide. The copycat room shared a thick wall with the observation deck. Monitors lined the walls, its cameras trained on every corner of the room.

Levi insisted on speaking to him through the mic system alone.

“I'm afraid a call, even a video call, won't be enough, captain,” the chief deprogrammer said. “It may even be counterproductive. May I ask why you're opposed to meeting face to-”

“No.”

Meeting him in person was out of the question. Not now. Not like this.

The hallucinations weren't all that returned. Levi dreamed of Dragunov, and if his attentions weren't elsewhere, he might have been curious about what he witnessed now, about the scenes of a life at once too much like his own and not at all. He peered through the eyes of a child one day and the next, an adult, and the one after, an adolescent, before the cycle randomized and repeated. He might have even wondered why, when before he saw flashes of every version of Dragunov, he saw now not flashes of a single point in time but of many in the life of only one man, one singular version of the man. If he was the forgiving type, what he saw might have even changed what he assumed he'd known of Dragunov.

He wasn't the forgiving type.

Erwin hardly moved in all the hours Levi had watched him. Levi had come in before the sun rose. Erwin had moved two, maybe three times from his chair before it set. Levi watched him give one word answers to leagues of deprogrammers and therapists, then thank them for their time before politely asking each one when they planned to return him to Intermipol. And each time, they explained why they wouldn't.

He then smiled and thanked them as if he didn't intend to ask again in their very next session. He always asked again.

 

“Levi, what is that?” Farlan asked.

Levi adjusted his turtleneck. It was a little hot for late spring – didn't help that it was black – but it would do. Farlan crossed his arms as Levi held out a transmitter.

Farlan looked around at the handful of observation staff on duty before leaning in and whispering, “A shock collar? What are you, a fucking dog-”

“Do you believe me?”

“About – about all the – I mean, I knew something was up, I just didn't imagine-”

“Do you believe me?”

Farlan jaw worked. “It is a bit…out there, this dream stuff. I mean- _really_ out there-”

“Will you do it or do I have to traumatize some underpaid nurse?”

Farlan sighed heavily and snatched the transmitter out of his hand.

“Nothing on me,” Levi said, more to himself than to Farlan. “No boot laces, nothing sharp, nothing...immediately lethal. But if you see me make...I don't know, sudden movements, see me pull anything – _anything_ -”

“Alright, alright. You know, there's a little delay on the infrared imaging in my eye. Quarter of a second, but still….these implants are good, but they've got nothin' on the original set. Why didn't you ask-”

“Who? Who would I trust more?”

Farlan shrugged. Almost as an afterthought, he muttered, “Isabel, I guess. If she were here.”

Levi stared. “Is that what you think?”

Farlan laughed wryly. “Sorry, that was stupid. Course you'd say it's me. And if our positions were reversed, you'd say it's her. Sorry – god, you've got bigger things to deal with than-”

“I wouldn't.”

Farlan looked up.

“I wouldn't...trust her with this. She wouldn't hurt me, doesn't matter the reason.”

“Wow. That reflects well on me, then, doesn't it-”

“Yeah, it does,” Levi said. “It means you're willing to do what's necessary.”

“And she doesn't?”

“She...she shouldn't have to.”

Farlan dropped his eyes.

“You chose this,” Levi said. “This life. You kept...” Levi made an amused huff at the memory. “...kept breaking into those Silvers vaults and then just...putting everything back the next day. Boss was so sure the CIA was fucking with us. Or the Chinese, the Russian government – but no. Just a kid angling for a job interview.”

“Well, it worked.”

“Yeah. It did. But Isabel-”

“Didn't she choose, too? She joined the Corps, same as we did. After the Lobov mess was cleaned up, I mean.”

“What choice did she have? Where else could she have gone? Who else did she know?”

“I mean…”

“Yeah. And now we don't even know where she is-”

“We're looking. We have leads. I'm looking-”

“I know. I wish-”

“Hey.” Farlan gripped his shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak and shut it. He tried again. “Leave Isabel to me. Hard part's over, remember? The big bad wolf is gone. That was you. You and Erwin.”

Levi nodded. He looked away, away from Farlan. Away from the monitors peering into Erwin's room.

“You're stalling,” Farlan said.

“No. I'll-”

“I'm in no rush, Levi, take as long as you-”

“Your sensors online?”

“Yeah, but Le-”

Levi clapped him on the back and stepped out into a corridor. At the far end stood the door to Erwin's room.

No one answered his knock.

And when he let himself in and said hello, no one answered him then, either.

No one answered him the next day, nor the one after that.

It's normal, said the deprogrammer chief. Levi resisted the urge to show her what he thought of this new normal.

For the first time, he almost found something like solace at night. Comfort in the familiar. Aim. Fire. Aim. Fire. How much easier was it to fire a bullet than to put it back in the barrel.

 _We're free._ Everyone tossed that around now. Intermipol was defeated. The big bad wolf was gone. But the one who clothed that wolf, who fed it, who nurtured it, they remained. In all the celebration, Iaso Industries will escape unexamined and unscathed. The Severance Package was pummeling their stocks, but that was all it was doing. Anyone can be inspired to forget with enough money. Iaso always had enough money.

Everyone risks celebrating too loudly. They risk growing deaf to distant howls. They forget that wolves travel in packs.

The word didn't stir anything righteous or noble in Levi. Freedom was Erwin's unseeing eyes. Freedom was his unmoving hands on his thighs as he looked out of a fake window into a fake city in an imperfect copy of his bedroom and bore the needles and the questions, the hours upon hours of questions. Levi had never heard so many in his life. Some, Erwin answered. Some, he did not. But he never answered Levi.

Levi played with his sleeve. He rolled it up. He rolled it back down. He shifted in his seat, pulled up near Erwin – close, but not to close. A deprogrammer had actually marked the floor with tape should Levi wonder what a quantifiably safe distance looked like. He could have laughed. He held it down for her sake, and it turned into nausea instead.

Sit with him, they said. So Levi stayed with him. Ate with him. Watched artificial sunlight burn his hair. Counted his lashes. Levi couldn't look him in the eye for long. Soon enough, they'll tell him there's no one left in there. They'll let him go, and Levi could finally mourn the way he should have the moment he'd left Erwin go.

The hallucinations rose now and then, double exposure in real time. Lazily, too, as if rising out of honey. A tug on the barbells was enough to drown them. The collar remained unused. Levi kept it on.

By the end of the second week, Levi dreaded going back. The unease sat low in his gut together with the scalding guilt that he should be feeling anything but unconditional devotion. He should be better. He should work harder, do more. But he doesn't know how to be loyal to a dead man. He doesn't remember how to hope for a miracle.

He stepped inside Erwin's room. Levi pulled his sleeve over his hand before touching the knob. His palms had taken to growing sweaty as he approached it, ever since he woke with a start some days ago and wondered in his fevered haze whether it'd be better for them all for Erwin to simply pass before the hospice-like deprogramming center robbed him of the last of his dignity.

He must not have pulled his sleeve far enough, must have brushed the metal knob. Static shocked him on contact.

“Блядь,” he swore under his breath. He rubbed his knuckles.

“Captain,” he heard in his ear a moment later. It was one of the observation techs. Levi glanced at a camera and raised a brow.

“What did you say just now?” The techie asked. “Mr. Smith seems to be-”

Levi turned to Erwin, who was looking his way. He was frowning. His eyes darted as if mining for a memory.

With some difficulty, Levi tried not to approach him like one would a startled animal. He dropped into his chair and muted the excitable techie in his ear. They had tried everything. Everything, but the most obvious thing.

Levi leaned forward. “Ты меня слышишь?” _Do you hear me?_

Erwin's frown deepened.

“Смотри сюда.” _Look here._

Erwin's mouth drew into a tight line. His frown deepened further. Altogether, he moved more in the last few seconds than in the last two weeks.

“Кощей. Помнишь? Remember him?” _Koschei. Remember?_

Erwin sighed haltingly.

Levi stood and dragged his chair toward the door. He propped it under the doorknob and remotely muted the room's mics.

Levi returned and knelt before him.

“Тебе понравилась эта сказка, я помню. Я думаю, что она напомнило тебе о Kronos.” _You liked that story, I remember. I think it reminded you of Kronos._

Erwin looked at him. Levi nearly choked on his own tongue. It wasn't a distant look, no thousand yard stare. This was Erwin.

Erwin looked away as suddenly as he had met Levi's eye. By then, the knocking and pounding became deafening. Levi would rather avoid their promises of drills and hammers. He needed nothing more. Erwin was in there. He was alive.

As Levi stood and strode to the door before the orderlies tore it down from the other side, Erwin spoke.

“You look like him.”

Levi feared turning, feared speaking even more. Any word or any pause or any non-pause of his could be a mistake, could ruin everything. And there was no way for him to know. Nothing he could do. Nothing but the obvious.

Levi swallowed hard. “Like who?”

A second passed, and then another. Levi hadn't expected an answer. But as he grabbed the rattling chair, he was surprised again.

“A man I met underground.”

 

Levi was not barred from the center only because the incident appeared to have knocked something loose. That made the deprogrammers happy. And there was no reason they shouldn't be. This was a step forward. This was progress.

Nightmares, they told Levi, was progress.

Inexplicably throwing his dinner against the far wall, they told Levi, was progress.

Muttering to himself as he wore the flooring into splinters with his pacing, they told Levi, was progress.

Levi was particular. Picky, Isabel called it. This wasn't the progress he wanted.

Erwin was still in there. Erwin deserved better.

He convinced the deprogrammer chief to reinstate his visitation rights after a few days. If Erwin became any more volatile and unresponsive, he'd need to be strapped down for his own safety. There was so little left to lose by trying, and she seemed to agree.

She told him that Erwin must have waited until he knew he could no longer bear to resist the conditioning before pretending to give in and accept a spot on the board. Or maybe he had gotten word that the Severance Package was ready for launch and every bit of it – the press conference, the hearing – was part of the plan. But his performance, no matter how much of it was genuine or concocted, hadn't, couldn't have, erased a month of conditioning.

Erwin was sitting against the bed's headboard when Levi came in. He was writing, always writing when he wasn't tossing in his sleep or snapping at orderlies who startled him or moved his notes.

Levi couldn't have blackened Erwin's eyes more had he brought tape to wrap his knuckles and stricken the man himself. The observation log noted how little he slept since Levi's last visit, yet Levi wondered if he slept even less than that.

Levi shut the door and strode toward him, stopping only when Erwin tensed from his proximity. Levi never knew him to do that before. At one time, Levi might have found it hilarious. Might have even mocked him for it. He never imagined it would churn revulsion in his gut.

Erwin must still remember the other Erwin's memories, still assume they were his own. The Erwin from the walls. The deprogrammer chief had worried it was a fantasy concocted to remove himself from the stress of reintegration and it took a direct line to Nanaba and her express confirmation for the chief to allow Levi to handle this part of Erwin's recovery alone. Levi hadn't lingered after the call lest he give the chief any more reason to want to peer into his head, too. As he untangled his tongue to speak, Erwin beat him to it.

“They didn't tell me.”

Levi tried to read him. He couldn't. “Tell you what?”

“That I could understand it. Russian.” His voice crackled from disuse.

Levi dropped his eyes. Erwin hadn't had much opportunity to use it, not professionally. It wasn't that great a surprise that Intermipol hadn't known. That few knew but Levi. Erwin had learned it, after all, for him. He never needed to. But Levi wasn't here for that. This meant Erwin wasn't entirely trapped in his counterpart's memories. He was fighting his way out.

“Tell me about Koschei again,” Erwin said quietly, interrupting his thoughts. “Please.”

So Levi told him about Koschei the Deathless. It was a silly story in league with the likes of The Golden Fish and The Giant Turnip. In line with most villains, he devoted his time to abducting the hero's lover. His body was immortal.

Only by breaking a needle hidden within an egg laid by a duck inside a hare stowed in an iron chest buried under a great oak rising out of a disappearing island in the middle of the ocean could he be slain.

But Koschei the Deathless wasn't even true to his own name. It had taken some time, but the needle had been broken. The heroes won. The beast was slain.

“Why did you say that?” Erwin asked.

Levi cocked his head. “Say what?”

“You said...before, he reminded me of someone else. Of Kronos.”

Maybe they were moving too fast. Erwin had enough to recover without Kronos, itself an unknown to all of them, to muddy his scrambled memories.

“I remember feeling...” Erwin went on when Levi hadn't. “...relieved.”

Erwin frowned deeply, struggling to remember. After a few false starts, he said, “I think...I liked the fantasy of it. Killing the unkillable. Defeating something that...by its nature, is undefeatable.”

“Not much of a fantasy. We didn't think Intermipol could be defeated either,” Levi said without thinking.

Erwin's face lit up.

“Please,” he said, “You can do it. Tell them. Tell them to take me back.”

Levi held his tongue. There was no getting through to him when he was like this.

Erwin moved to rise from the bed, but seemed to think it over and sit back down. The movement knocked his notebook to the floor. “Adam was banished from Paradise,” Erwin said, unseeing. “But I just walked out.”

The fallen notebook had drawings in them. Walls inside walls inside walls.

 

Erwin used his right arm less and less frequently. By the end of the second week, he stopped using it entirely, didn't even blink when it bruised and bled freely from how completely he had stopped recognizing its existence and slamming it unwittingly into a wall or the dresser. Every examination and every scan found nothing wrong. If something was wrong, it was in no way modern medicine could detect. The chief suspected that it could be a reenactment, whether deliberate or not, of some past trauma. Levi didn't comment.

Erwin's arm was fitted with a titanium brace as a precaution. He once asked Levi why he touched the back of his neck each time he saw it. Levi didn't answer. Erwin didn't ask again.

Levi dragged a cot into the adjacent observation room. He ended his agreement with Farlan and gave the collar transmitter to the observation techs instead. Sure, they could still be spies. Or the overworked, chicken-legged staff could be fooled or overtaken by one in seconds. But so far, the barbells worked. Better, and more immediately than they ever have.

Some days were better than others. Twice, he'd had to be sedated – once, before Levi had joined him in New York, and a second time when Levi hadn't yet rearranged his living arrangements and wasn't there, again, to witness it. But he knew how it started. He knew what it looked like when it started.

“Take me back.”

Erwin had shocked himself out of his sleep before the dawn. He'd started pleading before his eyes had fully opened. Cold sweat shined in the switched on lights, too-bright. He paced feverishly and knelt at the feet of the entering orderlies as his eyes adjusted, as his voice crackled from sleep or from lack of or from the weight of the shattered pieces in his mind that approximated his soul, a self he'll never have again exactly the way it was before no matter how well the glue held.

Levi had shot out of his cot at the first scuffle. He pushed into the room past the protesting staff and dared the techs to touch the transmitter now.

“Take me back. I belong there. I belong to Intermipol.”

Levi shoved his hands into Erwin's collar and raised him to his feet with stunningly little effort. Erwin was so thin. Levi couldn’t say if that was Intermipol's doing, or Erwin's own. He drew him closer.

“No one owns you. You're your own man, you son of a bitch.” Before pulling away, he added, “And if you don't start eating, I can strap you down and we can do it the hard way.”

The staff separated them before Levi could say more. He was led away and detained.

The chief deprogrammer was briefed when she arrived that morning. She had words for Levi. Then, silent exasperation, when Erwin began eating and even finishing his meals that same day. When Erwin made no more pleas, no more attempts at bargaining at random or during therapy for the next week, he was even allowed in the courtyard.

Levi wasn't.

“Don't make me say it, captain,” the chief said.

“No,” Levi said petulantly, crossing his arms as he watched from the observation deck as Erwin's therapist escorted him out of his room. “Say it.”

“Codependency.”

Levi laughed. “That's a joke, right? I don't talk to him more than a few minutes a day. Ten, if I'm lucky. And what, it's a coincidence that he stopped talking about the Walls the second I show up? That he's eating because I said so, might even start sleeping more than an hour a day if you let me-”

“Your methods are...severe, but I am aware of what you've done for Mr. Smith, captain. I've already informed the staff that your visiting hours will be lengthened. The difference in progress with and without you by his side is more pronounced than anything I've ever seen.”

Levi frowned. “Then what-”

“With respect, I was referring to you, captain.”

Levi wasn't laughing anymore. “Pay attention to the actual patient here, doc.”

“You eat and sleep here, captain. You leave even less often than you're allowed to see Mr. Smith in person. You watch him for hours, days at a time. When was the last time you've done something for yourself in all the time you've been here?”

“Does taking a shit count?”

It didn't.

Levi left the center out of spite. He couldn't be sure that he wouldn't throw something and he wasn't ready to hand her that kind of victory. Erwin was the one who needed help. Erwin had been in Intermipol's hands for weeks. He'll never be the same again and no one seemed to understand. The man engineered the mutiny of the century. No one seemed to care.

He wasn't being fair, he knew. Nanaba was helming the Survey Corps. Mike was MIA, though under Nanaba's maneuvering, leads were beginning to surface. And though, according to Moblit, Hange registered shocking amounts of brain activity, they were still under. He wasn't even fair to Erwin's doctors. Of course they cared. At least ten – former Survey medical staff or family of an agent – flew across the country, across the world, to lend their expertise. They were doing all they could. And their all wasn't enough. Levi's all wasn't enough.

Levi walked up the dim stairwell of Erwin's old building. The door to the old apartment was closed, but not locked. It had been broken.

The place somehow looked even more ransacked since he'd last seen it. Every personal affect was missing – confiscated. Lying in an Intermipol storage block somewhere if it hadn't all been tossed or burned. Every book, every notebook. Every memento, every photograph. He'd never seen a home look less like a home. Never seen a place at once so ruined, at once so empty.

Ceramic crunched under his boots. The pot had been knocked over. The soil strewn across the kitchen floor was long since dead and dry, and the green that once lived in it long since wilted into nothing. It had been a joke of a gift, that spider plant. Levi – then- had intended nothing more than to unsettle him, to have his fun at Erwin's expense.

But Erwin had kept it. He'd even gotten a house sitter to water it when they went abroad for the global survey.

Levi passed the closet that had hidden the console Erwin had used to communicate with the Shadow Corps the night the film dropped. The hollow in the wall was open, but now it held cleaning supplies and workman's tools – things much more in line with what one might find in a closet. Erwin must have arranged for an agent to come in and dismantle the console. Maybe he'd even ordered them to make a mess of things to throw off Intermipol's vultures.

He could have. He wouldn't have minded the mess. This was never really a home. There were never that many pictures to begin with.

Levi wandered into the bedroom. He reversed the dusty duvet and sat down, pushing himself further onto the bed and crossing his legs. He'd met him right here.

Maybe if he stayed a while longer, he'll hear the door click open again. He'll hear a man draw a pistol from a hidden safe, watch him round the corner, and let him change his life.

He lay on his side with his knees tucked into his chest and rested his eyes. He didn't dream that night.

Erwin talked about his outing the next day as if he hadn't seen a sparrow in his life. There was even something like a smile on his face, before he sobered and asked Levi with the severity of a priest whether he was particularly busy that evening. Before Levi could get into the details of what he would do to these doctors if they had given Erwin any reason to be this apprehensive, Erwin admitted to wanting to see what the courtyard looked like at night. With Levi.

Security details watched them striding shoulder to shoulder, thinking themselves sufficiently hidden to keep an eye on Erwin. Honks and distant shouts drifted in from the city streets. It wasn't even close to dark – the light pollution made sure of it. But Erwin bumped into him playfully once, so it was perfect.

Erwin still slept fitfully. Levi took advantage of the chief's generosity and let himself inside that night when Erwin jolted awake for the third time within the hour. He swung a chair beside the bed and sat in it. He didn't look at Erwin, didn't touch him. Didn't offer platitudes, didn't once open his mouth. He didn't touch his phone either, didn't leaf through the books on the bedside table. But it was enough. And maybe it was enough for Erwin. Maybe it wasn't a coincidence that he slept through the night.

Sometimes, Erwin looked at Levi like he meant to memorize him.

“You're in them,” Erwin said one day, seemingly out of nowhere. “The Wall dreams. You die a lot. Sometimes you live. I die a lot, too.” He smiled humorlessly. “In one, I live forever.”

Erwin showed him his notes. Levi slipped onto the bed and leaned back against the headboard next to him. He prayed Erwin wouldn't see how stiff his motions were, hoped he couldn't hear his restless heart. Erwin hadn't shown his notes to anyone. Not the orderlies. Not the doctors.

“I remember your dreams,” Erwin said, and there was immediately too little space between them. Levi stared straight ahead, unmoving, ears ringing, as Erwin gently drew away the neck of Levi's sweater.

“That's why you wear this,” Erwin said.

Levi stiffened. He unwrapped his cotton tongue and asked Erwin if he wanted him to leave.

Erwin frowned. “No.”

Levi pushed his luck. “Why not?”

Erwin rested his head against Levi's shoulder. He touched the ring on Levis fourth finger and Levi imagined he remembered that too. Imagined Erwin didn't want to repeat a conversation he never wanted to have again.

Chances are, Intermipol had confiscated Erwin's ring. Or maybe he had hidden it before his capture. Erwin didn't offer to explain. Maybe his mind hadn't even gone there. Maybe Levi imagined that he had rubbed his own ring finger. He hadn't even worn it long enough to form a visible band. Sometimes a cybernetic identification ring was just a cybernetic identification ring.

Levi raised his trapped arm to touch him, any of him. His wayward hair. The elegant curve of his neck. Wrap it around his gently rising chest. He almost did.

But he wasn't here to paw at him when Erwin was in no state to refuse. He'd begun to touch Levi more often. They were fleeting, casual things no one else would have noticed, no one but Levi, who didn't dare seek it out and did not encourage it, but who cataloged every last brush of fingertips, every feather touch against the small of his back, and played the memory across his skin and rewound and played again with no small amount of shame for deriving pleasure from a touch-starved man.

Erwin now jumped awake every few hours instead of every hour. The chief called it progress. Levi narrowly resisted offering his opinion.

Levi watched him as he struggled to go back to sleep and tried not to react to the small, apologetic smile Erwin shot him, as if, even in this feverish state, even moments after witnessing himself or some version of himself being ground into paste by Titan jaws, even then, he prioritized Levis comfort over his own.

His harsh breathing echoed in the small room. Levi left the room to find a washcloth in the adjoining washroom. Erwin had closed his eyes, but still he panted as if he had run a hundred miles when Levi came back.

His breath hitched when Levi sat on the corner of the bed, and his eyes snapped open and blinked curiously as if he hadn't expected Levi to return.

Wordlessly, Levi ran the cloth along his temples and the damp arch of his brow. He ran it along his neck too, the sheen across it picking up the sparsest shards of artificial moonlight. Levi smoothed away his damp hair.

He moved to leave. He would have left, if not for a barely-there touch on his wrist. Erwin looked ahead, unseeing, but the line in his brow belied the fury of his thinking. His voice, already small, was muffled by crumpled sheets.

"Wait, Levi," Erwin said, and Levi waited.

Levi leaned against the headboard a respectable distance away from Erwin and willed him to sleep.

Erwin tossed for an hour before unthinkingly draping his arm across Levi's lap. It tightened around him when Levi began to shift away. He should move. He should have moved. But in moments, Erwin's breathing deepened, and Levi couldn't remember why. In the morning, he slipped away before Erwin woke.

The next night was no different, not at first. Erwin asked Levi to wait, and Levi waited. But the way Erwin's eyes flashed, Levi doubted he intended to sleep soon.

"Turn to me."

Levi looked down at him from where he sat and quirked a questioning brow, but did as Erwin said. Erwin's eyes flashed with intent. It was the first time since before the film that he truly looked like himself.

"This way, the camera can't see my lips. They can't read them," Erwin said lowly, and moved up the bed until his lips grazed Levi's ear.

At once drunk off their closeness and annoyed that this meant he couldn't look at his eyes or read his face, Levi muttered, "Kinda obvious what you're doing."

"Plausible deniability."

Levi shivered. Maybe the hot sweep of his breath was a fair exchange.

"I don't tell the chief. Or any of the doctors," Erwin said. "They would worry. They wouldn't understand."

"Tell them what?"

"You have to believe me."

"I do."

Erwin laughed softly and pressed his forehead against Levi's temple. He lingered like that for so long that Levi was sure he'd dropped it.

"Intermipol showed me something they didn't mean to," Erwin said.

Levi turned sharply and started to rise. "What is that supposed to-"

"Shh." Erwin placed a large, warm hand to his chest and Levi let himself come back down.

"Reintegration works so well," Erwin said, "because Intermipol has - had - the resources to maintain a full scale immersion program. A society in a box. They welcomed me, listened to me. There were no doctors, no injections, no...no abuse, no-"

"Hard to believe," Levi spat.

"They were just misguided-"

"They made titans out to be fantasies. They made people forget they ever knew their own father if it meant they'd forget that a Titan ripped him in half. They knew exactly what they were doing. If you ordered every Survey agent to wear a blindfold before going up against titans, no one would be calling you misguided. They'd call you something else. And I would, too."

Erwin became quiet. Levi bit his tongue for what good it did after the fact. He was terrible at this. "I'm-"

"I'm sorry."

Levi frowned, and looked askance at him as best he could without moving away from the camera's path.

"What?"

"I don't know why I said all that-"

"You said it because your mind's been shoved in a blender for four weeks," Levi snapped, and, thinking Erwin might need to hear something more reassuring, raced blindly for something to add and ended up instead with: " Don't give me that sorry shit again."

Levi was ready to expire then and there, but Erwin huffed a laugh against his neck.

"I imagined every possible scenario," Erwin said, "every form of abuse, torture. I was ready to die."

It was more difficult to hide the rise of his shoulders or the lock of his jaw with Erwin so near. Erwin rubbed his arm in consolation, in apology - or maybe because he just wanted to. Because he could.

"But they were kind. Patient. They listened to every word I said despite believing none of it. There was no stick. It was all carrot. And it worked. I had hot meals. I had my own room. If I wanted to be left alone, I only needed to ask. There were flowers at my bedside table every morning. White tulips."

Levi shrugged off a pluck of deja vu.

"But I've gone on such a tangent," Erwin said. He turned his face into Levi's neck. “What I meant to say was, they couldn't make me forget,” he whispered. “Whatever they did, however it happened – it made me remember.”

Levi waited for him to go on. Erwin crossed his arms loosely. The right-arm brace clinked against a button on his shirt cuff. “I remember. I remember the Walls.”

“It's distance. Hange thought so, too. Thought it had something to do with us. I didn't tell you sooner because-”

“I don't mean the dreams. Not exactly. I remember...I remember the checkered tablecloth in the kitchen with a tear on one side. I remember nearly tripping over my own feet because I would forget to tie my laces from how excited I was for school. I remember shutting the door behind me every morning. It was always so heavy. A little crooked, I never knew why. I remember staying after and watching the sun set in a little alcove just past the schoolhouse.” Erwin took a shuddering breath. “And it never touched the earth. It rose and fell from behind a wall. It went on in both directions farther than I could see. Levi, I didn't see it in a dream. I remember it. And when I try to remember the childhood I thought I had, suddenly I can't see a single detail. I can't smell my mother's baking. I can't hear my father's singing.”

Levi's hand had found itself in Erwin's hair. He stroked through his undercut mindlessly. It was getting long.

Erwin laughed humorlessly. “I won't hold it against you if you spoke your mind. Said I was disturbed. Insane. Maybe I do need to hear it. Maybe if I heard it from you, I could let it go.”

Levi said nothing. His hand stopped moving, just resting at Erwin's nape. Erwin shifted away at Levi's silence, just enough to read his face. Levi didn't know what he must have looked like.

Erwin called his name, and it was the little seed of panic in his voice roused him. Levi moved away to recover his arm.

“I shouldn't have said anything-” Erwin started, quieting only as Levi lifted his shirt from the swell of his hip. Levi almost expected the scar to have vanished for no other reason than for the universe to fuck with him just one more time. But there it was.

“They ask you the year and the president when you wake up. Gauge how hard you rattled your head. I was out for a couple hours,” Levi said. “Got 'em both wrong.”

“And here's another fun fact,” Levi said, laughing coldly. “I woke up wanting to die. Overheard the doctors say Isabel and Far didn't make it. Punctured ribs. Cracked skull. Usual shit you'd exp- expect from a car crash.”

Erwin wrapped his good arm across Levi's chest. It should have felt obstructive. Caging. Levi laid his arm over his and laced their fingers.

“Then in comes Isabel looking like a fuckin' mummy. Not a scratch on her, but she thought it'd be funny. Farlan's nose was busted and his arm. Nothing serious. I'm halfway to murdering the doc for pulling one over me before everyone- everyone shoves me back into bed and she tells me it's normal. That you get funny when your head gets a beating at a hundred miles an hour. You imagine things.”

Levi squeezed Erwin's hand. “I was a stupid kid. Wasn't even twenty. Didn't know shit and didn't want to. Thought if I just ignored how I couldn't remember the names of streets or cities, how...how somehow I could write in a language that didn't exist - everything would go back to normal. And it did. For a while, it did.”

Levi turned to him. “I wasn't bullshitting about the distance thing. Soon as I got close to you, I started dreaming again.”

“But they were different,” Erwin said.

“They weren't about different versions of me anymore.”

“Just one.”

“Yeah. Just one.”

“You don't see a fixed point in time. You see-”

“His whole life. Just his. Pieces, anyway.”

“You saw something.”

Levi grit his teeth. “I saw something.”

Erwin stroked his joined hand with his thumb. He pressed his lips to his shoulder.

Levi swallowed hard. He shut his eyes. “He had a little accident, too. Dragunov. That bastardization of me.”

Assuming he wasn't a bastardization of Dragunov.

He abandoned that line of thought. “Saw it a few nights ago. I recognized the intersection. Everyone was sitting in the same seats. The same music was playing on the radio. Isabel's favorite. I couldn't stand it. Same red light. Same drunk son of a bitch.”

“You know, I wondered sometimes,” Levi said. “Why I dreamed of Dragunov, why I saw you in them, why I even saw flashes of Hange and Mike, if not in person then in writing or in photographs. But not them. Not Farlan. Not Isabel. I wondered whether they just didn't exist in his universe. Or if they were dead.” Levi laughed hollowly. “Now I know.”

Erwin didn't let go of his hand. Levi was sure he was crushing it, and yet letting it go would dissolve the axis on which the world tilted. He knew so little, was certain of so little. But he knew the weight of Erwin's hand on his heart. He was certain of every scrape on his knuckles, every callous on his palm.

Erwin was given temporary release from the center in the following days. The chief made it clear that certain footage would not be archived, and said no more on the matter. Survey has arranged for a different apartment. Levi wasn't sure how much the old was even worth remembering.

He visited New York's Survey division as Levi drove upstate where Hange was held. Mobilit smiled when he saw the ruddy orchids, the ones with the twisting petals Hange never shut up about. They could start another garden, Levi thought, when they woke up. And if Intermipol - or anyone - overturned that one too, Levi wouldn't be as merciful again.

 

Levi returned to the city and walked with Erwin through Central Park.

They hadn't spoken of the memories again. They didn't pretend they never had, either.

The chief asked for Levi alone. He came in ready to fight and left deflated. She was right. He knew she was. She explained to him that Erwin appeared to recover faster than any of the hundreds of reintegration victims she's treated.

But that was all it was. The appearance of recovery.

She was confident in Levi's ability to see right through Erwin's stellar acting, but implored him to not sequester himself away with the man, to not assume Erwin as his sole responsibility. That Levi needn't turn away help when it was offered, when it was needed.

It was a nice idea, as most are, in theory. But aside from doctors, aside from therapists, there was no one left. Hange was down. Moblit's attentions were understandably occupied. Mike was gone. Nanaba was more inordinately busy than Levi thought possible for one person to be. Farlan's work with Firefly was taking him across the world, and it was rare that he stayed in one city for longer than a few days.

No one else knew of the dreams. No one they could trust.

“We need Egret,” Erwin said as they strolled past a pair of rollerbladers.

It was as if no time at all had passed between that conversation and this one.

“There was a point when I was about to have a chat with her boss. Before we were...interrupted,” Levi said when he found his voice. He reached out and steadied another passing rollerblader before she fell. "Brats," Levi mumbled when Erwin smiled too warmly.

“Anyway. Her boss," Levi said. "The one who wants to help us for some reason.”

“Why wouldn't he want to?”

Levi blinked at that. It literally couldn't have been more obvious. “Oh. Yeah. You're him. And he's- Yeah. So you would do something like this? Go to all this trouble?”

“To help another universe? Share what advancements we have, do it potentially for no reward of any kind, do it even if it meant the end of a personal and professional life...it's easy to say what I might have done."

Levi opened his mouth to speak, but Erwin went on.

“But I'd like to think I would. I hope I would.”

“So you trust him. And Egret.”

“Well. She did release the Severance Package.”

Levi turned sharply. “Don't bullshit me."

 

Erwin tried to hide his smile. He was unsuccessful. “She had people on the inside. I had them relay the details before they were captured. Had to wait until every part of it was verified. One misstep, one misspelling, even, and Intermipol would latch onto it for dear life to try and discredit it."

"She was right there. We were right there and she didn't tell me."

"I ordered her not to."

Levi gaped.

"Aside from the very real danger that she could have been overheard-”

"I waited," Levi seethed. "I did what you said to the fucking letter and you still go behind my back."

Erwin tried to speak. Levi didn't let him.

"Do you know what it was like? Do you know what it feels like to watch someone you- to watch someone suffer and do nothing? Do nothing when you could've done everything?"

"Yes," Erwin said quietly.

Barely a week had passed since he was granted temporary leave before Erwin returned to the Survey Corps. Though even he - with palpable reluctance - agreed that he was in no state to take his previous post, nor to even lead ground teams before thoroughly reacquainting himself with capture procedure in case Intermipol had done away with that too, he returned "only" in a consulting capacity.

Levi "only" wanted to lock him in his room.

Soon, it was as if Erwin had never left. While they sent out feelers for Egret, Levi watched Erwin throw himself first into Survey training texts, then into classified assignment documents. Every mission, every incursion, every time an agent coughed on the job, every incision their medics made on the field - he read it all. He met with division chiefs and squad leaders to fill in the cracks Intermipol couldn't quite splinter into pieces. That was all well after rising before the sun to exercise for three hours, and then four.

Levi hardly saw him. Not in the way he wanted. Before Levi knew to stop it, Erwin had blinded and deafened himself to everything and everyone that had nothing to do with his return to the Survey Corps. If Erwin spoke to Levi, it was to discuss formation patterns and outreach tactics. How determined Erwin was to pretend nothing had changed at all.

But something did change. Erwin changed. He didn't bat an eye at casualty figures. He listed them like one would a particularly gruesome recipe. He refused to meet with Survey veterans or their families when before he wouldn't turn away a single one. Levi didn't remember this. He didn't remember a cold man.

 

And maybe it's his own fault for being drawn to that version of Erwin who touched freely, who felt and spoke freely. Maybe he should be ashamed of wanting this lazy, imperfect, pliant Erwin who existed bare and unguarded for but a few days before the first walls came down. Maybe underneath all the orders and behind all the masks, there was a man Levi could have loved.

He didn't love Erwin. He couldn't see how he could deserve to - to say absolutely nothing of reciprocation, which was up there with flying pigs in the realm of possibility - not after what he did. What he didn't do. He should have saved him.

He couldn't bear it for much longer.

Levi shut the door to Erwin's office. Erwin looked up from his desk. "Levi," he said uncertainly, and Levi wondered how naked his own face was to inspire that kind of hesitancy. "Is something wrong?"

But before he could answer, Erwin stood and rounded the desk. "If it's not urgent...I need to say something I should have said sooner."

The uncertainty was gone. Clinical and rehearsed was in. "I want to apologize if I was...untoward when you visited me. In the deprogramming center. I wasn't myself. I promise it wasn't-"

"Fuck," Levi blurted.

Erwin frowned as he attempted to read him. "If I make you uncomfortable, you don't need to keep-"

"You're not commander anymore." Levi snapped. "You don't need to keep running on fumes. Intermipol gone.”

"It's not over.”

“Casualties are at record lows, both agent and civilian."

“I'm only doing what needs to be done-"

"You're killing yourself. Intermipol is dead-"

Erwin dropped the placating smile. "Then why does it feel like we're still at war? Like the next great tragedy is around the corner if I so much as blink at the wrong moment? Hange might die. We visited them alone. We visited together. It did nothing. The dreams have nothing to do with the overdose. Mike may as well be dead-"

"So Hange dies. Mike dies. Farlan and Isabel," Levi snapped, "let's throw them in too. Every one of them believe in you. Believe in the survey corps. If they died, they died for you, and for it. And you take their memory and spit on it by killing yourself every day. A little bit at a time." Petulantly, Levi added, "At least when I did it, it was painless."

Then Levi remembered. "What were you about to say? Were you about to tell me to fuck off?"

Erwin frowned. "No-"

"You were. Is that what this is?" Levi drew toward him. "I'll do it. I'll go," he said quietly. "Compared to the last order, this one's a walk."

"That's not- that's not what I-"

"What do you want, Erwin? You, not whatever you're trying to be. Do you want me here? Do you want me?"

Erwin set his jaw and turned away.

"Hey-" Levi started, spooked. "Wait-"

Erwin went back to his desk and fell into his chair, blinking rapidly as if dignity lived in tears.

"I do," Erwin said with great effort. “And I shouldn't,” he added thickly. At Levi's look, he added, “Not now. Not when I- when the Survey Corps needs you. I almost-” He shut his eyes. “I almost took them up on their offer. Egret's spies. I could've escaped. I could've left. And not- not because it was to the benefit of the mission. It wasn't. Not because I was sick of it or – or because I felt like I was being halved a little more each day. I was, but I expected it. I prepared for it.” Erwin opened his eyes.

“Nothing tempted me. Nothing except...except wanting to see you again,” he said. “I thought, if I could see you just...just one more time...”

Levi rounded the desk.

“You know, there's probably an automaton Erwin out there somewhere,” Levi said. He reached for Erwin's face, and when he didn't move away, Levi swept at his welling eyes. “No dreams. No feelings. No messy shit.”

Levi traced his cheekbones with his thumbs. “He's out there just fine following orders. When Robo-Intermipol says jump, he asks how high. And he's happy jumping til his engine busts. And then robo-me's gotta put his screws back in.“

Erwin smiles in earnest. “You've been doing a lot of that,” he murmured. He turned into Levi's palm and pressed his lips to the rising beat in his wrist.

 

*

 

“We're running out of time, Levi.”

Dim lamplight flashed on the sleek, curving plates of the titanium arm. Levi shut the door to Erwin's study.

“I knew it. We waited too long. You should've let me break him out,” Levi said. “You said he had to live. You said this universe was important.”

“He did, and it is. So much so that I can't trust anyone else with an assignment like this.”

"Suddenly Bird Brain's not so hot shit."

"I'm beginning to doubt. She's unreachable too often. Her mission debriefs have more and more holes. If she blindsides us, if she's been working for the sisters against us all this time-"

“We wouldn't be in this position if-”

“Intermipol is dead. My counterpart is safe. We did everything right,” Erwin said. “But the lock won't last.” Erwin leaned forward in his chair and drew his face into his hands. The half of his face that wasn't in shadow was lined with exhaustion. “When I acquired the machine, the calibration had long since been started. If the lock breaks...we won't be able to secure another one in any of our lifetimes.”

Levi snorted and crossed the room. He ran a hand through Erwin's hair. “Let's adopt. Then tell the brats in our wills they won't get shit til every titan on that side is gone."

Erwin's eyebrows rose. "Adopt?"

Levi gave him a look. "We can't really do it the old fashioned way."

Erwin dropped his eyes. He wrung his hands. “The assignment is a last resort for a reason. It's an-”

"A boy and a girl. Doesn't seem fair to just have the one.”

"-incredibly small window of time. If the lock becomes unstable – if you become stranded-”

"They'll get their own bedrooms. No TV in there. Actually, no TV, period. It's all garbage."

“-I'll never see you again.”

“You'd-” Levi said thickly, “you'll read to them instead. Fairy tales or something.”

Erwin smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. He took Levi's hand in his own. “Yeah. I will.”

“Just not that creepy Koschei one. I don't even remember where I heard it.”

 


	20. The Wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [ Fever Ray: The Wolf](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1UAjpQVeFc&ab_channel=UMaisMau)  
> ♫ [ Puscifer: Tumbleweed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UoXUXipsLw&ab_channel=EveryMan)
> 
>  

  


Hange was awake.

Rising in and out of consciousness, more accurately, but it was enough. Levi dropped everything to ride upstate after relaying Moblit's message to Erwin, who had gone to Connecticut's Survey division to meet the region's helidisc division captain. 

Levi dropped his bike right outside the doors to the Survey affiliated hospital, and was ready to tear through the doors before he caught movement in his periphery. Someone bounded down the front lawns from around the corner of the main building. 

Levi's legs moved of their own accord. It couldn't be. 

It was. It was Hange.

Levi closed the distance between them at a run as Hange plummeted to their knees in their hospital gown and gawked at the finely manicured grass as if they'd never seen it before. He had never known them to smile like that, know anyone to smile and laugh with their entire bodies, as if every passing atom was a gift. 

"Hange, what the hell are you-" 

Hange looked up with welling eyes. Their smile froze. They gaped at him. 

Nurses and security guards rounded the corner, huffing and yelling after Hange. They didn't seem to hear a word. 

"You're alive," Hange said, still gaping. They stood. "you're alive-"

"Yeah?" Levi said. "What else would I be-"

Hange knocked the air out of him with their leaping embrace. They swung him around, nearly off his feet. Moblit had come running, too, and doubled over, red-faced, when he saw them.

"Captain," Moblit said breathlessly, "That's not-"

  


Hange yanked Levi away but held his shoulders in a vice grip before he could think to step away. "I killed you," Hange said. "I killed you. I should've- I should've known you wouldn't turn it off, you idiot, you idiot-"

Levi threw a spooked glance at Moblit as Hange hung their head. "Hange-"

"I know you're not him, I know it doesn't matter but I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Hange said, and pulled him into another embrace, more bone-crushing than the last. Levi returned it hesitantly as he frowned at Moblit over their shoulder.

"Levi, meet Hange," Moblit said. "They're from....3713."

Levi frowned. "That supposed to be their room number?" 

Hange let go of Levi, their attention stolen by the grass again. They fell to their feet and picked an ant off a dewy blade.

Moblit rubbed his neck. "No. The year."

  


"So yeah, your Hange and I, we've kinda been sharing a head," the other Hange said. 

They'd been taken back inside and had blessedly remained still until the doctor was satisfied there were no immediate danger past the muscle they pulled in their calf in their excitement. 

"Sharing a...head," Levi repeated flatly as other Hange cocked their head and peered out the window.

"Is it always that blue?"

Le v i scoffed. "Sometimes it's even grey."

"Levi-" Moblit groaned as not-Hange's face lit up. "Grey? How grey? When? Does it rain? Do you still have rain? How often-"

A few minutes with Hange's counterpart and Levi reluctantly learned how much he took for granted the rain, the moon, and the common beetle. Moblit gave him a general idea of what he learned before Levis arrival from this other Hange - whom they've decided to call Han for the sake of avoiding a name like Hange Remastered, which Han insisted be considered - but despite knowing Moblit was doing all he could to frame Han's story in as delicate and no-nonsense way as possible, there was no escaping the - well, the nonsense.

"Okay. A space colony," Levi said. "Fine. Sure. But-"

"Levi-" Moblit started.

"Telepathy? Seriously?" 

Han scoffed and propped themselves up on the hospital bed. "Course it sounds bizarre. You green peas don't even have the right word for it."

Levi frowned. "Green pea-"

"And anyway," Han said, "you're taking the whole switching thing pretty well."

Moblit cleared his throat. "We have, uh, experience with that one."

"The two ain't that different," Han said, then frowned. "Is that right? Ain't?"

Levi blinked. "What?"

"I mean, I've had a few years to get it right - Hange's a very good teacher - but contractions are still a little-"

"Wait, years?"

"Yep. Okay fine, a few decades."

"Okay," Levi said. "Jokes over-"

"Hold on," Moblit said. "I swear it makes sense-"

"In what universe does it make-" Levi started, then caught himself.

"Really, you're lucky the time displacement is this narrow," Han said.

"Translate," Levi said to Moblit.

"Uh, well, Han's universe is slower than ours. One of our days is almost a year for Han. And...Hange."

Levi stared.

"So telepathy is kind of rudimentary," Han started, "it's really more like-"

"Wait," Levi said. He glanced from Moblit to Han, neither of whom seemed to be feeling quite the flush of dread that made Levi's breathing stick in his throat. "You're telling me that in the time Hange's been comatose here, they...they've been trapped over there for decades?"

Moblit wrung his hands. "Maybe trapped is too strong-"

"I take offense!" Han said. "I've been a very gracious host. There's a juice bar in my frontal lobe and everything."

Levi wasn't hearing it. "This is too fucking much-"

"Wait," Han said. "Please." 

Levi met their eye again, which was really Hange's - assuming this wasn't an elaborate practical joke, which Levi was finding exponentially more difficult to believe with every word he hears - and he tried to imagine it, really tried. Imagined sharing a head with Dragunov half as long as Hange had with Han. It was beyond his ability to imagine.

"If you're here," Levi started, "where's our Hange?"

"Keeping my flesh prison warm for me, I guess."

Levi gripped the bed railing to keep from throttling them. "So what's the plan, Mr. Hyde? Bide your time here 'til the clock runs out there? Wonder how old you are over there. Gotta be a geezer. Must be nice to be 30 again, gotta be tempting to stick around, you sick fuck-"

"I'm 124."

Levi stares. Moblit's brows shot up.

"Yep," Han said triumphantly. "Not even up for a mid life crisis. So shove your ageism up your-"

"Han," Moblit asked carefully, "what are your lifespans?"

"Two-fifty, give or take."

"Wow," Moblit gushed under his breath. Levi left the room.

This was officially too much. The visions were always on the edge of too much, but this was definitively and empirically too much. At least the dreams were shared. At least he could be sure he wasn't losing it alone. 

And if he were honest, truly honest, he still held the thought in the back of his mind that the four of them were simply all losing it together. They had all had a bad sandwich somewhere from the same place whose products were laced with extremely long acting hallucinogens. That made a hell of a lot more sense, he thought, than multiverses and fucking telepathy. 

Maybe this was like all those shitty movies where the protagonist wakes up from some bizarre dream. It was a narrative crime, sure, and robs everything that happened before of meaning, but at least the hero was alright in the end. Everything went back to normal. Everything made sense again. 

And he'd be alright if he was one of those things that vanished. Maybe the hero of this story was Erwin. Maybe he just had to wake up.

"Levi."

Han had followed him out where Levi leaned against the outside wall and mimicked him cheekily, even the sour look on his face, though Levi would swear they exaggerated that one.

"Sorry, maybe I should've done it differently," Han said. "Hange told me as much as they could about what this time is like and about your dreams and I was so sure-"

"Stop," Levi said, and discovered that Hange made the same insufferable pout in every universe. "it's not your fault. Just let me...let me..."

"Process?"

Levi shrugged. "Sure."

Han looked like they had just gotten away with high treason.

"Sorry," they giggled. "I uh, cracked a few too many of those and Levi, I mean, my Levi, he'd have knocked me out for that..."

"I'm shocked," Levi said flatly. "It 's not even that funny-"

"Oh, it was! Because Levi was an android and-" they mercifully stopped at the look on Levi's face. "Right. Processing. Little at a time. Baby steps."

Baby steps.

"I won't stay long," Han said to them after the hospital discharged them, after they had gotten dressed and began wobbling outside on a crutch to avoid aggravating their pulled calf. "For obvious reasons. Sooner I can leave, sooner Hange can come home. But hey, with how much Hange's learned, when they come back, it'll be like having both of us! Isn't that neat?"

"Terrifying," Levi corrected.

"But I can't leave right away," Han insisted. "Some things...some you can only talk about in any meaningful way if you've lived it."

Levi opened the rental car's door for them. "Great. Another highly advanced universe of altruists coming to our rescue out of the goodness of their hearts," he drawled. 

Han huffed as they settled in. 

"Maybe I wouldn't have, before," Han said as Levi drove off. "Maybe I wouldn't have cared. But you spend enough time with a person...like, almost a hundred years, and you kinda start to care about their buddies, believe it or not."

And to Levi's continued surprise, Han hadn't crossed over for pleasantries. Admittedly, they hadn't meant to cross over at all, not until Hange came knocking. While Hange's body recovered from the overdose, Han told them, Hange had been busy. They were a roommate in Han's head, a second voice, a second, so to speak, pair of eyes. 

They had come to know everything there was to know about one another. 

Predicting that he would rather not have anyone overhear the sort of things Han had to say, Levi drove them to a Survey safe house just outside the city. 

In between launching themselves into a couch, Han insisted that Levi tell them about their dreams again, if only to confirm Hange's own description. 

Levi curtly rushed through his own and as vaguely as he could bear. Han didn't ask him to elaborate. Levi wondered whether to be grateful, or whether Hange had seen more than enough to guess at what his dreams might have shown. He shut that line of thought and instead described what he knew of Erwin's too, and what he guessed Mike's could have been, though of his he knew least. Han was close to tears when he finished. 

"So it's true," Han said with no little wonder. "You're Core. You're actually Core."

Moblit and Levi shared a look. 

Levi cleared his throat. "You can't abbreviate hardcore, Han."

Han rolled their eyes. "No no no, Core!"

Most universes had no connections whatsoever, Han explained. Like planemos, they wandered the multiverse alone, and whatever conscious thought developed within would be forever unable to connect with any other universe. Many were paired. One may travel between them, but between them only. Occasionally, paired universes coalesced and formed chains that allowed one to hop from one to the other to the next. Vast networks joined and split, never still. 

And then there existed a singular type that had as of yet only existed in theoretical models. One that possessed as many disparate connections as there were conscious beings who existed in that universe to harbor that connection, human or otherwise. Never found. In all of Han's surveys of the multiverse, they calculated that only a minuscule few were anything like this one – roughly one in every googolplex. Levi was not sober enough to ask what that is, and Han scribbling 10(10100) for him didn't illuminate it either.

"You really did it. Won the jackpot of all time," Han said. "And space! Time and space."

"Great," Levi said, and fell into a chair. "You gonna tell us how to refund our prize?" 

"Afraid not. Not unless you wanna just leave and switch with your-"

"Pass."

"Wait," Moblit said. "If we're connected to every other....and if Kronos crosses over-"

"Yeah," Han said grimly. "You're catching on."

Levi laughed hollowly. "Okay. I see it now. You don't want Kronos contaminating your precious samples. We're just data points to you, aren't we?"

Moblit frowned. "What does it matter why-"

"It matters," Levi said, "because I'm through second guessing everyone and everything. I'm through with allies who come and go whenever they like. Like we're guinea pigs to be fed and petted when they feel like it. Because," he said to Han, "if you're saving us for your little science fair project, I think we ought to know. Or maybe not," Levi shrugged, standing and beginning to pace. "Maybe you three-thousanders with all your machines and your surveying think you've all got a little messiah in you. Think we could all can do a little saving with."

"Erwin saved me," Han said.

Levi crossed his arms. 

"And yeah, you do all seem like ants to me sometimes," Han said. "Okay? Hazard of the job, cataloging you all, making sure Kronos hasn't gotten to you yet. Ask any census taker, any statistician from your time, hell, from Babylonia's time, and they'll tell you the same."

Moblit's eyebrows rose. "Hange taught you Babylonia-"

Han stood and rounded on Levi. "I do this because Kronos got to me. Okay? He, or it, or whatever. They did it. My first home? It's dead. It's gone. We're both immigrants, you know. In a way. You from across the pond. And me," they said with false cheer, "from a husk of a universe with not one person left in it, not a soul. And you can guess why."

"It got you," Levi said, disbelieving.

"Damn near."

"Then how did you-"

"Erwin. That's the long and short of it. And no-" Han said at Levi's narrowing eyes, "not because I don't want to tell you. I don't know. And I want to know."

"And you think us ants could help you understand?"

"I think - and sure, call me selfish, call me a narcissist," Han said, "but Erwin - the one from my second home - he saved me for a reason. I think...I think he knew something. I think he thought I could help. Help make it end."

"Knew? Isn't he with you now? I mean, now, as in, wherever you are-"

"He's dead. Kronos got my Erwin, and then the one who saved me. So-"

""Got" him? What do you mean, "got'?"

It meant it started with dreams. It always started with dreams. Then hallucinations. And finally, the whispers. The echo of them at the periphery of his consciousness. The crawling at his nape. The imagined fingers closing on his neck. Kronos was disease. Kronos was nightmare.

It was also Han's conjecture. It made sense for them to think so, Levi admitted. That their first Erwin succumbed to whispers on the chamber floor on which he was then sentenced to execution, and then, too, the Erwin who switched Han, who left them enough crumbs before throwing himself out an airlock from fear of what he might do to his crew ,to the universe, if he succumbed. To that last speck of humanity searching, surveying, and archiving from its metal tomb. But it was two cases out of however many Han surveyed. Both of which they happened to be intimately connected to. There was no more reason to believe it was Kronos at fault than Han themselves.

It was they who installed that telepathy - okay, mind-sharing - tech with Erwin's insistence. By Han's own admission. They themselves said it was experimental tech. And Han was quick to avoid the possibility of their own actions having anything to do with Kronos' spread.

"Who invented them, Han?" Moblit asked suddenly. "These machines that let people switch? Where do they come from?"

Han didn't know either. Old world myths, whispered things, never taken seriously but never without the barest bit of reverence, the promise of what if, credit their invention to an advanced species which discovered how to travel between universes. And which accidentally gave it to humans. Or maybe it fell to man by accident. Maybe none intended the fledgling humanity to have it. Or maybe one did, just one. Their own Prometheus.

"So our punishment is Kronos," Levi said.

Han shrugged.

"No?"

"I mean, sure, blame gods or the stars or whatever for the forest fire if it helps you sleep at night. Just not the way to put it out."

"Mythologizing makes a thing more intimidating than it is. More menacing," Moblit thought aloud.

"You just told us Kronos fucked up an entire universe by whispering. Can't see it get more menacing than that."

"There's something to be said for morale. Give up, Levi. Let Kronos win." They laughed at Levi's scowl. "See? You do have something to lose."

Using the machines took years, usually decades of calibration to find one's target universe. Sometimes, centuries. It wasn't the best tool for booking spontaneous summer getaways. The machine was the only method of switching for paired and chained universes, to say nothing of their utter uselessness in unpaired ones. 

But in Core, they had options. Hange had proven it. They were able to switch without a machine. And Han knew how to switch them back. 

Their description of the chemical cocktail reminded Levi of the vial in the assistant's hands when Egret had strapped herself in to volunteer to be her employer's messenger. He wondered if they were the same. If they were shared or creates independently, convergence. If this was another kind of Promethean fire.

Trigger words worked, too, he told Han. He didn't care to elaborate. 

"Wait," Levi interrupted as Han launched into a third millennium molecular biology lecture that dropped Moblit's jaw. "This Core thing is cute and whatever - but only the four of us dream. Hange and Mike. Me and Erwin. Why not him?" He asked and nodded at Moblit. "Why no one else?"

Han froze. They looked aside the way Hange did when they knew something. Even their tells were the same.

Levi crossed his arms. "Spill."

"I was gonna get to it!" Han insisted. "Pinky vow!"

"Pinky promise," Levi corrected. "And that's not the right-"

"Alright, alright," Han waved him away. "And I really don't know, not for sure. Do you notice how they start? When they start?"

Levi recalled what Hange said about distance. Remembered how quickly their dreams returned when Levi had come within feet of Erwin again.

"Hange wondered if it was distance. Between Erwin and me. We pretty much proved that one when-"

Hans brows shot up. "You did-"

Rapid blips from the safe house's security system interrupted them. Someone was at the door. Someone with access.

Levi shoved the two out of sight regardless and came to the entrance himself, a hand in his inner jacket pocket.

The reinforced door swung open. It was Erwin.

"I-" Levi started. "Aren't you supposed to be in-"

Erwin shook his head. "All I'm supposed to do," Erwin said as he shut the door behind him, "is say hello to a friend."

"Erwin-" Levi started, and cobbled together an explanation that didn't sound blatantly insane as Erwin moved past him into the foyer. 

"This is-" Levi started as Han stood from their perch on the couch arm. 

"H-Han," Han said. 

Erwin smiled warmly and shook their hand. "Welcome home," Erwin said. 

Han was visibly taken aback. Their eyes welled.

"How did you know?" Moblit asked.

"The, uh...name was a dead giveaway," Erwin said wryly. He frowned as Han wiped at their eyes. "Did I-" Erwin started.

"No," they said, and laughed wetly. "Thank you," said Han, the lone survivor of a derelict world.

They get Erwin up to speed. Levi watched him. He searched for any sign that any of it could be too much. He let himself feel a little envious of how gracefully Erwin accepted Han's story. 

"You're right," Erwin said to Han. "If calibrating this machine takes such a steep investment of time and energy, and if it was the last thing my counterpart thought to do, it must have been for a reason. He must have thought you to be uniquely able to understand either the machine, or Core, or Kronos. Or all three. And you've already done all this. Told us this much. For the first time," he said, and Levi was inclined to agree, "I don't feel like we're fighting this blind."

He had gone quiet when Han mentioned the whispers. Levi decided to save the burning question for later, maybe when Erwin had properly digested the meeting. Han had no such compulsion.

"How about you?" Han asked Erwin pointedly. "You hear anything?"

"Hey-" Levi snapped.

"No, Levi, it's more than fair to ask," Erwin said. "At this point, it would be irresponsible not to." Erwin fell silent for a moment, deep in thought. Han gripped the seat of the couch. Levi wished he wouldn't stretch it out and just say it. Of course he doesn't hear anything. He wouldn't. He would have said something.

"I don't know," Erwin said.

The room froze. Moblit started fiddling with his sleeve. Han stared, stricken.

Levi couldn't take it. "No one's gonna say it? No one wants to tell Han why he might not be in a place to-"

"I can speak for myself, Levi," Erwin said, and then to Han, "I've been...indisposed for some time on account of an assignment."

"On account of torture," Levi corrected.

"Levi," Erwin said in warning.

Han watched the exchange, not bothering to hide their own spinning gears. But despite his efforts to get back to their earlier thread, Levi started to wonder. 

He wondered if the memories scrambled in Erwin's head could sufficiently weaken him to Kronos' advances if or when he manifested in Core. If Kronos appeared in people's heads as some intangible thing, as something a little like madness, then few but a man already pushed to the razor's edge would fall as quickly.

Before Levi could consider it any more, his phone rang. But it wasn't his personal cell. It was the one Egret had given him. He left the room to take the call.

Beckert had just been granted release. Jones and Isabel were free. 

Erwin, seemingly catching on from the baldly relieved look on Levi's face, rose and asked Moblit and Han to excuse them. In the entrance corridor, away from the rest, Levi let himself laugh a little. A little hysterically. They were free. Just like that.

Erwin moved to put a hand on his shoulder, before thinking better of it and wrapping his arms around Levi instead.

"Bring them home," Erwin said into his hair.

Levi nodded and leaned into him, boneless with relief.

Erwin's pulled away. "Have a safe flight."

"Wait," Levi said when Erwin's hands lingered too long, when nothing but the fall of his lashes and the part of his lips belied his intent. Levi tempered the flush of adrenaline in him and wrapped his hands around Erwin's wrists. He held him in place. "I know what a hit and run is," Levi said. "Another kiss and run? Almost as bad."

Erwin stiffened, caught. "I didn't- if you didn't want-"

Levi yanked at his collar and damned the man's height before closing the distance to his ear by rising on his feet. And maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe it should have been said long before. 

"I want. I want you," Levi said. 

But this can't be the only way they let themselves do this. By the time Levi flew there and back and gotten the two situated and taken care of and any new intel on Egret recorded and cataloged, it will be like nothing had ever happened at all. Again. 

His hands migrated from his collar to his neck, his jaw, his face. He caught Erwin's shiver with his fingertips, trapped his sigh between his palms.

"So give me something to look forward to."

  


*

  


"This way, commander."

Nanaba passed the sheriff and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim county jailhouse. 

"I'd be real careful, ma'am," the sheriff sad as he waved his hat at a fly. "Foot from the bars, at least."

Wouldn't matter, Nanaba thought, eyeing the figure in a far cell and turning over a lock in her hands on the one nearest. He could break through these in seconds. She neared the far cell and wondered if the sheriff should know that he'd already done it. 

It didn't matter. She removed the busted lock and swung the cell door open to the sheriff's blustered shouting.

"Lady," he shouted as she walked into the cell, "took half the force to put him down! That bull, he nearly..." He trailed off as the man he eyed with so much fear shifted away. He hadn't even looked their way. But he spoke when Nanaba drew nearer.

"Thought you were dead."

Nanaba stopped. She imagined this a million times and a million different ways. And none of them went like this.

"Funny," she said. "Thought you were."

Nanaba stepped closer. The man shifted away on the stone slab.

"This heaven," he asked, "or hell?"

"What does it feel like?"

He looked up at her. "Feels like something in between."

  


*

  


Erwin returned to the foyer. Han looked politely away with a small smirk, and Erwin wondered how much red still dusted his face.

To Han's earlier question, Erwin answered honestly that he heard no whispers - nothing that sounded overtly malicious, anyway.

Not yet, was left unsaid.

"It never sounds malicious," Han said. "Not at first. It sneaks up on you. Erwin - from my first home - he described it like this...haze that just kept growing. A shadow getting darker and darker til he couldn't...couldn't hear his own thoughts."

Erwin looked down at his hands. There was the haze of battle. The haze of death. The shadow of guilt that made it difficult to breathe, much less think. He had all the shadows and miasmas in the world to choose from in the life of the man in the walls. A man he had always thought so innocent of all this, so preoccupied with his own world, a man Erwin assumed to be ignorant simply by the development, or lack, of the world around him. 

Erwin had underestimated him.

"You gotta stop dreaming," Han said resolutely. "It always comes through the dreams. So if what Levi tells me checks out, about the distance – you two gotta separate til we know what to do next."

Separate. Again. Maybe it was good that Levi stopped him. They couldn't lose something that never started. 

Erwin dropped that line of thought. "What else do you know about Kronos?"

"Spreads like a virus. Feeds off humanity like a parasite. Best we can nail down about it is it's a kind of…conscious or semi-conscious entity that either aggravates or introduces the titan plague once it passes through." Han cleared their throat."It's...it's able to hop through universes through people's heads. Through, uh, through dreams," Han said.

"Then does it-"

Wait," Han said. They looked away. They looked guilty.

"Han?" Erwin pressed.

Han didn't look at Erwin.  They wrung their hands.  "I didn't...I couldn't say it with Levi in the room." They rubbed their temples.

"The only person I've seen Kronos attach itself to," Han said  with some difficulty , "the only person Kronos ever...ever attacks or whispers to in all the thousands of worlds I've surveyed...every time, every last one...is… it's you, Erwin. It's always an instance of you."

Erwin leaned back in his seat. A faint ringing started in his ears.

"The Erwin who switched me," Han said, "when I crossed over, the crew told me that he...he threw himself out of that airlock after the nightmares wouldn't stop, just before I switched. One of the last things he said to them was...that he couldn't let anyone force his hand. That he couldn't lose control. And in hindsight, it sounds a lot like he was talking about Kronos."

"Those words could mean anything," Erwin said, but even he was unconvinced of his own words.

"My own Erwin said the same. About not wanting to lose control.  Not wanting to hurt anyone.  And I saw Kronos consume him myself. Well, heard it. Right as he testified on behalf of our armada. And when he was too – too overwhelmed by the whispers to finish, the judge took advantage of it and sentenced him to death. The generators failed, the domes fell, the ships were rigged to blow and – and that was it for humanity."

Kronos was more insidious than  Erwin had ever imagined. Intelligent, too, if it could calculate and project that interfering in that place and time would herald the beginning of humanity's end. That, or it just happened to be in the right place at the right time. A coincidence. A fantastic, humanity-ending coincidence.

"So If this is Core - and there really is no if about it at this point - then if Kronos can get to you here -"

"Then this parasite," Erwin said, "will be able to corrupt not just our world, but potentially all of them."

Han nodded.

"And it's only ever been able to manifest through instances of myself."

Han blew out a sigh and nodded again.

Erwin had had no cause to suspect the man in the walls was already infected, was already a vessel of Kronos. His entire identity began and ended with humanity's survival. And yet, he, too, was a forest fire, a virus. His scheming and underhandedness was, while both for a cause Erwin was naturally sympathetic to, knew no end. No compromise.

And there was no way to know whether Kronos had infected him long prior, nothing to suggest he could not hide his true self from Erwin. Nothing to stop him from making sure Erwin saw only what he wanted him to see.

And what Erwin witnessed for months was death. Constant, unparalleled shows of death and destruction and famine and suffering again and again and again. Was that not an omen in any and every sense of the word? Was months of witnessing death in one's sleep, one's own death and that of his most dear, again and again and again, not more dehumanizing than a single month in reintegration? A secluded dollhouse preaching peace and safety?

Erwin knew himself. He knew he had grown more paranoid, more restless, more irritable and more despondent since the dreams began.

And his greatest shame was left unsaid. When he stopped dreaming in reintegration, he enjoyed it. He had forgotten what life was without the persistent specter of his mortality and that of those closest to him visiting him every single night. Riding in on every moon, and as if that weren't enough, invading his waking hours. 

It had been so peaceful.

Aside from the carnage, He dreamed of nothing else. No quiet nights. No images of the man in the walls out on the town. No rallies and no galas his counterpart from the walls or one of his soldiers mentioned on a deceptively quiet scouting mission past the walls. 

Only death. It was only ever death.

Han was right. Everything is obvious in hindsight.

Erwin laughed softly. "This is great."

Han raised a brow. "Does uh, does "great" have a different meaning for you guys or..."

"It's so simple, then," Erwin said, "I just need to die."

"THAT IS NOT WHAT I-”

"WAIT..." Moblit started.

"Or made comatose or frozen. It's...it's that simple," he said, feeling the weight from his chest begin to lift. “All this time, it was that simple.”

"Sir," Moblit said. "I'm not sure we should jump to-"

“I mean,” Han said, “Worst case scenario, cryogenic freezing isn't that bad of a-”

Moblit frowned. "We haven't really perfected it on our end-” 

“I'll help! I remember how it works. Mostly.”

“Han-”

That was it. It was over. If this Kronos did manifest only through Erwin, through every instance, every version of him, then the most logical solution would be to remove Erwin. By any means.

Levi won't like this.

It hit him then, what that feeling was, that gnawing, that heaviness that started when Levi shut the door. He missed him. 

Maybe they could meet one last time for one last proper goodbye.

Nanaba called in. They found Mike.

  


*

  


The drop off was not far from the airport. Isabel launched herself into his arms at such a speed that Levi just barely held them both upright. Her charms clicked against her leg. He waved away Jones' uncertain hand and embraced her, too. His sister and his best flier were coming home.

Vegas was an exceedingly strange place for a drop off, and Levi didn't doubt just how far it must be from Egret's actual base of operations. He was disappointed, and yet unsurprising, to learn that Egret and her people had taken great pains to keep the location from both Jones and Isabel despite all their talk of working together. 

He gave the two a once over and threatened a court-martial if either even thought to misreport a single scratch.

They wanted to know everything. The film. Survey's independence. Erwin's freedom. Levi hadn't realized how much they had missed, realized again how long they'd been gone with a flush of guilt. 

They traded spots with a family in the back of the plane so that they could catch up with some privacy. The Survey Corps couldn't quite spare private jets, and Levi wasn't a fan of rowing across the Atlantic. 

Their capture, Levi concluded, sounded a little like an extended vacation. But the key to the car was missing, and so was the car, and so was the driver. And the vacation wasn't their idea.

Still more disappointing and yet just as unsurprising, neither possessed any actionable intel at first blush. Though he was sure the deprogramming assessment might root out a detail or two, nothing they relayed was, on its face, of much help in narrowing Egret's motives, her employer's motives, or even her location. But at least she was generous. There had been a spa.

They questioned him, too. Levi answered as much as he could given their location. Though he'd looked nearly very passenger up and down as he passed and found little to suggest they were anyone but who they seemed, it was a farce of a background check. 

And though he'd insisted on leaving the area and driving wildly enough to discourage Egret's vultures before just barely making a flight to New York, it didn't feel like enough. It would never be enough. He considered getting up once in a while to record everyone's faces and send them to Survey Sec to run them through their system. Isabel grabbed his tapping hand and held him in place. She distracted him by calling Farlan and letting Levi hear the yarns he spun about shoving this and that up so and so's ass for taking her and Jones. 

Levi asked a passing flight attendant for water. She passed it to him as Isabel rummaged in her bag. Levi glanced Jones' way. She was quiet. Morose. 

"We gave them a proper burial," Levi said of Abrams and Singh, and though it felt like half a lifetime had passed between now and the Panacea incursion, she didn't need to be reminded of whom he meant. She thanked him with a small smile.

Levi turned over and wondered how he'd missed how roomy their seats were. Or how they can be pushed back to be nearly horizontal. No. Perfectly horizontal.

His eyes snapped open. He was lying on a strange couch in a strange room. He'd passed out.

Levi scrambled off as if scalded. Not now. Any time but now. Dragunov was next to Isabel at that very moment. 

He spotted a door. He ran to it. He'd throw Dragunov's body off the nearest tower if it would switch them back.

"Levi?"

Levi turned, his back to the door, hand still on the knob. Belatedly, he realized he must really be out of it to be able to move like this.

A man who looked and sounded a lot like Erwin rose from where he'd been sitting at a corner desk. Lamplight curled around the bend of his titanium hand.

"I'm not me. Him. I'm not him. I'm-" Levi said dumbly.

"I assumed," he said gently. "It's alright-"

Levi pushed off the wall, flushed with anger. "It's pretty fucking far from alright. Isabel- she's there. She's right there. He's gonna...she-"

"Is perfectly safe," Erwin - this Erwin - finished..

"I don't know what bridge he's selling you but-"

"But you don't need to believe me," Erwin said curiously. "Haven't you seen it yourself? Haven't you wondered why she's in some dreams and not others?"

Erwin approached him. Levi fought every muscle in his body, coiled and ready to move away. He'd seen Dragunov kill this man a hundred ways, a thousand. Almost every dream ended in death. But never one with this man. He alone survived. 

He was more like his own Erwin than any of the others.

"Some things carry over," Erwin said. "Some don't. If I understand correctly, both versions of you emerged from an accident some years ago," he said as he reached questionably for the hem of Levis shirt. When Levi didn't pull away, cool, slick metal dragged against his abdomen as Erwin revealed a familiar scar on his hip.

"He came out alone."

Levi fought a shiver as Erwin traced the scar. He was too close. They were too close. Levi stepped back, and Erwin's hand fell. 

"So he gives you a sob story," Levi said, a little breathless. "He's still a monster. He..."

Erwin's eyes were narrowed slightly, curious. Playful.

"Wouldn't I, of anyone in the word, know what he's done? What he almost did?" He stopped for a moment, as if to weigh his words. "What you almost did?"

So on top of doing fuck all with his body and name, Dragunov also couldn't keep his mouth shut. It took an impressive level of cognitive dissonance to hate Dragunov for nearly killing Erwin when Levi very nearly did the same, and he didn't appreciate this Erwin taking this opportunity to open that particular box. 

Except now, Levi realized in an ill-timed revelation, Levi might even have a more impressive resume than Dragunov. It wasn't enough for Levi to make an attempt on Erwin's life once. He had to do it again. Death by abandonment.

Erwin approached him again. "Out of anyone in the world, any world, I can't think of a single person more sympathetic to your opinion of him than I am."

"But you trust him."

"Him. And you."

"You don't know me."

"More than you know."

"I'm not him."

"How so?"

"I'm worse."

He shouldn't have said that. He planted a defiant scowl on his face, but his heart had begun to race with such abandon that standing was becoming a trial. Everything was swimming.

He barely saw Erwin's outstretched hand for what it was. When he was sure he couldn't stop his impending fall, he took it. Erwin led him back to the couch and sat him down.

"This is the first time you've switched since our universe locked with yours," Erwin said, though Levi wasn't sure how much he understood as he was suddenly feeling too much, seeing too much. Erwin's voice thundered, though Levi knew by its tenor that he'd lowered it to a whisper. 

"It takes a little getting used to," Erwin said. He raised his hand, telegraphing his movements. When Levi didn't flinch away, he ran it gently through his hair. 

His eyes rolled shut at the sensation. "Is that why I can move?" Levi asked. Last time, he had managed no more than a tap or two against Erwin's - this Erwin's - hand, in the Ring.

"Yes," Erwin said, "There's no temporal delay anymore. He's not here. It's only you."

Levi all but preened at Erwin's hands as they raked through his hair, as they rubbed his shoulders. His hands, the warm, red-blooded left and the cool, soothing right soothed him, distracted him.

Distantly, Levi was stunned at how freely this Erwin touched him, even knowing he wasn't Dragunov, knowing they'd never even properly met before. As if it was the most natural and uncomplicated thing in the world. He leaned into the touch.

Traitorously, Levi remembered how much more distant his own Erwin had become.

He shouldn't be thinking this, feeling this. Any of it. How right his hands feel, how warm his eyes. How long Levi had stifled himself, how long he'd wanted this. Just this, if nothing else. 

He needed to go.

Levi trapped his titanium hand. "I can't stay here."

"You won't," Erwin said. "I'll help you return home. I promise," he said, and he even frowned the way Erwin did when he was sincere. "But if you allow it, I'd like to pick up from where our last meeting started. Well, almost started."

"Isabel-"

"She and Jones are safe. Safer than they'd have ever been with Egret. Another reason I prefer we communicate without a middleman from now on."

Levi frowned. "Egret? Your Egret?"

Erwin eyes drew downward. "I'm beginning to suspect that I am not the only person she reports to."

"How?" Then, with considerably more disdain, "Who?"

"You might have heard of them. Rose. Maria. Sina."

  


*

  


Mike had been spotted in a bar off Dallas. A patron thought to contact the local Survey Corps division to check in with the man who had become violent when someone remarked at how similar his recollection of the Recon Rangers were to the Survey Corps. Nanaba hadn't called it in until they were already in New York. She was not using official Survey channels.

Erwin opened the safe house door and in walked Nanaba wearing her best Don't Say A Word face. Followed by Mike. Mike, who Erwin hadn't seen in months. He stopped just inside the foyer and stared at Erwin, looked him over, and then went on staring.

Nanaba had given Erwin as much of a primer as she was able through texts. It did little to prepare him.

“You were dead, too," Mike said suddenly. "Saw you in pieces.” He smiled grimly. "Not as pretty on the inside."

"Hange," Nanaba said as they joined them. "Thank god. Moblit shot me a text when you woke up."

Han froze. 

Nanaba frowned. "Hange?"

"I think," Erwin said as he closed the door, "it's time for introductions."

  


It was something of a miracle that this Mike survived as long as he did in their world, given the centuries between them. Yet there was no shortage of similarities either. Mike's counterpart - who Han took instantly to calling deputy after learning of the Recon Rangers - had been hunting for something - not unlike their own Mike - before waking up one morning and finding himself thrown unceremoniously into a ditch as planes and drones roared overhead, as bikes rode past and roads crossed and wound like ribbons across once-empty plains.

Nine days. He'd been wandering in the wrong century for nine days. He'd tracked every minute. And he prayed every second for a way home. They asked him if he dreamed, if he knew how Mike was faring in his own world. He let them know the extent of his bumbling. He'd nearly gotten himself killed more than once. But the deputy had friends on the other side. Friends who wouldn't turn him away. 

The deputy asked for a short reprieve with his hands at his temples after an hour or two of this.

"He's been switched by machine," Han said the moment he and Nanaba left the room.

"Could his universe possess that kind of tech?" Erwin asked.

Han was of the opinion that it didn't matter. Only one needed the machine for both to switch. But it wasn't ideal. It wasn't a lasting switch. Mike must have been switched quickly. Sloppily. Dreams were one thing - migraines were another. Nature knew when something, someone, didn't belong. It was trying to correct the imbalance.

But when Nanaba returned, she denied that the deputy had suffered anything like it in Texas, or even on the plane. The headaches hadn't started until they arrived. 

Han didn't speak right way. They looked pensive. 

"I can bring him home," Han said. 

Han proposed giving him a variation of the cocktail Hange had taken – one with a lot less coma involved.

In between a chorus of scandalized  groans , Moblit thought to ask how it was even possible to concoct something out of such easily available ingredients - more precisely, why it is that no one has ever done it by accident. Han's lecture on ratios and percolation time alone put the deputy to sleep.

No one liked the idea of giving him an untested formula.

So Moblit offered to test it.

No one liked that idea either. Moblit didn't particularly care. 

Erwin checked his phone as Han prepared the formula in a nearby Survey lab.

Don't wait up. Spontaneous roadtrip. Need to lose anyone on our ass.

So the drop off had been made. Erwin had dispatched a team to accompany Levi at a distance should anything unexpected happen, but it appeared Egret had been genuine in their promise. 

Now he would love to know what she would say about a machine switching his best friend.

Nanaba was against Han's idea under any circumstance. Hange's coma had wound her nerves tight to snapping, and she made it clear that she was not about to risk losing Mike again. Not when he was just found. She didn't care how few hours Han swore it would take for Moblit to rouse from the formula.

Moblit woke up in two minutes. 

He jolted upright in the cot Han had found in the lab and lay him on while the Halcion mix took effect. Han steadied him as he attempted to stand. He recoiled and fell into the cot again.

"I was about to report, professor, i swear," he said. "I ...i must have tripped over the rigging and banged my head, im so-"

"Rigging?"

"I'm sorry, I'm so- I was clearing it away, but the winds...and the captain needed me and I, and I tripped and...where are we? Where am I? How long-”

Han put their hands on their hips. "See?"

Moblit was given the counterpart to the mix. He woke up, himself again, in less than a minute.

"How're you doing?" Han asked.

"Like y' gav' m' horse tra'quil'zer," he slurred. Han slapped him gamely on the shoulder and moved to record trial notes as a Survey medic checked his vitals.

"Will there be any adverse effects?" Erwin asked as Moblit lolled his head sleepily.

"He might be lord of the porcelain throne for a day or two, nothing worse," Han said without looking up up from their notepad. "Man, I miss these things," they said, twirling the pen in their hand. Erwin wondered what other practical tools turned vintage curiosities would delight a  fourth millenium tourist.

"So anyone could take this Halcion mix," Erwin said, holding up the little stoppered vial, "anyone in the world - and switch with their counterpart."

"Temporarily. Think of it like a visa you gotta renew. You'd need to keep taking it to avoid fun things like nightmares and hallucinations."

"So the machine would be-"

"Permanent residency. Political asylum. You get the idea."

So it was true. The dreams were the adverse effects of an improper switch. The dappled, walled childhood wasn't imagined. It hadn't been planted by Intermipol. Somehow, by accident or by design, he had switched in his youth, or been switched. This wasn't his home. This was never his home.

But he'd begun dreaming and hallucinating only recently. Not even a year had passed since they had started. Something must have triggered them. 

Han watched him.

"Erwin-"

The deputy joined them abruptly. He stood at the threshold of the door.

"I'll do it," he said.

Han blinked, still visibly cowed by Nanaba's prior misgivings. "Are you su-"

"Yeah. Gotta go back." He stepped in. "You folks didn't bring it up and I didn't offer, but from all the whisperin' you get up to when you figure i can't hear makes me think we're lookin' for the same thing."

"What are you looking for?" Erwin asked, though all his mind and every atom of him knew he could have meant only one thing.

"Kr o nos," he said.

The deputy went under. Han made enough for Mike to take regularly until they could take him to Egret's machine, wherever it is. Now that Beckert and Isabel and Jones were back where they all belonged, that stroke of diplomacy may make it easier to access it if Egret and her employer still wanted to be friends.

Han asked for a moment alone with the deputy before he left them. They had raced by the part where their ships escaped the domes when they had recalled their story, but Erwin hadn't missed which two ships had remained last. 

He wondered where that impulse came from - to think of these instance of themselves as extensions or as second chances. He knew, were he to switch and live among the walls, he would treat the Levi from the walls no differently than his own. But they weren't the same. History, circumstance and chance shaped the man. There shouldn't be so many similarities aside from appearance, apart from name. And yet, he thought as the deputy - as Mike - closed his eyes, there were.

They had moved back to the safe house before allowing the deputy to take it. Nanaba insisted he at least be comfortable for the return trip. Erwin left her to stay at his side and wandered into the foyer. He dropped into a chair and raked his hands over his face.

Both Mikes had been searching for leads on Kronos. Maybe one's search had influenced the other's. Maybe there was no way to know who had inspired who. 

"Whacha thinking?" Han asked when they popped in. 

Erwin shook his head. 

"No, really," Han said. "Like, I already know but Hange told me it isn't polite to speak over people in your time, so..."

Erwin made an amused sound. "It's polite in yours?" 

"Wouldn't need to in mine. You  third milleniumers are so so slow."

"Are you going to tell me you need to deliberately slow your speech for us, too?"

Han didn't respond, but they raised their hand to their brow in mock exhaustion and Erwin got the idea. 

Erwin reminded Han of what they said to him about dreams, headaches and hallucinations plaguing only those who had been switched, who lived in a universe to which they didn't belong. The multiverse pressing a wrinkle out of her collar, so to speak. But it didn't make sense. They had started dreaming more or less at once. They couldn't all four have been switched at the same time. He has reviewed all their records. He'd found outside parties to corroborate. It didn't match up. 

But some things did. Tthere was the cottage with the crooked door. There was the car accident. 

Han hummed at Erwin's suspicions. "Ever since Levi mentioned distance exacerbating the dreams, I wondered. There's a reason i didn't compare switching via machine to citizenship, you know. Even if the switch was perfect, with machines on both sides, with every i dotted, every t crossed, so perfect that neither of your selves dreamed, you'd never really belong. Not that you'd ever know it if it was perfect to begin with."

"Then why now? If, hypothetically, Levi and I switched at the cottage and at the crash, why did we only start dreaming now?"

"Million dollar question. I mean, even with the machine, being mismatched for longer than a few months without periodically switching back would do incredible harm."

"What sort of harm?"

"The membrane between universes gets twisted, irritated, like a constant rub. Your selves trying to return. I've seen it before, but never compounded with...with so much..."

"So much...?"

Han crossed their arms. They looked guilty again. "The link. I didn't wanna...I didn't want to think it had anything to with...but it might...my Erwin made me install a mind-sharing neural network so that Levi could help him stave off Kronos. Last resort of last resorts. And when Mike and I volunteered as buffers in case of shock of overload...I just never thought it might.."

"Han?"

"...it shouldn't even be possible for it to translate over like this," Han muttered. "I've never seen anything like it....I don't mean the tech itself crossed over, that'd be absurd- right? Erwin? Tell me you and Levi can't actually read each other's minds. Erwin, don't look at me like that."

"No, Han."

"Okay. Good. One crazy Core thing at a time."

"You think this universe being Core has something to do with it?"

Han sighed. "Yeah. I think it does. I think the four-way link itself translated over because of Hange's connection to me. Explains why Hange and Mike dream too, even though, chances are, they've never been switched before."

It made sense. Abruptly, Erwin remembered asking the deputy about his nose. How long he'd been able to pick up scents as well as he did. The man only stared, as if the question was bizarre. "All my life," he had said.

“Hange..." Erwin started. "My arm.”

“Mm?"

“The man I see in my dreams. In the walls. His arm was lost. And as soon as I started dreaming-”

Hange glanced at Erwin's brace. “You lost feeling in it.”

“And Mike – his olfaction became extraordinary. And his counterpart just admitted that he's had this ability all his life. It had crossed over.”

“And Hange...”

“They were building the machine before Intermipol forced us to scrap it. But that they even managed to do that at all…”

“Dunno about you folks, but we in future-land invented some sweet cognition augments. Speeds up your noggin like nothing else.”

“Sounds just like Hange.”

“And Levi?”

E rwin thought. “I don't know.” 

Except maybe he did. Maybe it was the guilt. Maybe it was the grief.

He remembered how quickly Levi had returned fire at Foley. But also how deeply he felt. How loyal he was. It could be any of those things. It could be none of them. He didn't want to consider it. To guess at what was genuinely Levi and what wasn't.

“I think whatever quality of Dragunov's crossed over for him," Erwin said, "it's something he's determined to avoid showing.”

Han watched him sadly.

"But we've never felt any of this before. Why now? Not until-” he stopped.

“Until?”

“It started...in November.”

Han sat straight up. “Erwin….when did you and Levi first meet?”

“November.”

  


*

  


Levi let himself be led through the tower he'd seen so often, too often, and finally knew what it was to stroll through it without a veil of apprehension at knowing what would come next, what always came next. And without it clouding everything else, Levi thought It was almost beautiful. The cool, steady hand at the small of his back took him wherever Levi pleased.

These sisters, this Erwin said, profited off the titan virus in land, stock and pharma. Erwin's cure threatened their profit margins. There were few methods to ruin a man that the three hadn't yet tried. 

Finally, they settled on a classic. An assassin. And not just anyone. The best. Levi knew this part of the story.

Erwin had thwarted him – the only one to do it, Levi didn't say - and he liked what he saw. 

Dragunov needed a mission. Erwin needed a loyal man. They agreed to collaborate. There was little more to it than that, Erwin told him. Levi shut his eyes lest Erwin catch him rolling them. Sliding into a man's lap and going on a ride was a little something more.

Erwin agreed to call him Dragunov, too, if only for the sake of clarity, and didn't ask Levi why he chose the name.

The sisters needed to believe Dragunov was working Erwin from the inside, gaining his trust before he struck. But they grew impatient.

Erwin suspected they sent a second, less conspicuous spy, Egret, to keep an eye on them. To grant them all false security, Erwin promoted her and let her work with Levi and his Erwin, let her believe it was a job given only to his most trusted agent. It wasn't an unfair assumption. The risk he'd taken making her his ambassador was no small one.

Erwin only needed her out of his hair on his own end. She wasn't even aware Levi was even switched at that moment, though she's been ordered to follow him on the other side. She doesn't know how good an actor Dragunov was.

Levi stopped. "She's following him and Isabel to New York?"

"Of course," Erwin said as if it was the most understandable thing in the world. "I need to keep up appearances." Sheepishly, he added, "It's only to follow. And if she is working for the sisters, it's fun to make her run around a little."

Levi scoffed. He was just like Erwin. His voice, his mannerisms. His eyes, his mouth.

And his own Erwin joked so infrequently that Levi wondered if this was how he would do it, if he would also be this affectionately unbearable. If his own Erwin was as strong as-

He ended that line of thought.

"Kronos," Levi said. "Ever heard of it?"

"Unfortunately. And what a terrible name, too. He's a figure in your mythology, no?"

Levi's heart pounded in his ears. "So you do know it. How much? How long? How much do you know-"

Erwin stopped him with the lightest touch of his knuckles against his jaw. 

"I'll tell you everything."

Levi insisted he compress it down to the amount of time it'll take to bring Levi to their machine and switch him back. He was half kidding - but Erwin looked entirely serious when he agreed.

It was a lot to take in.

Kronos spread through dreams. And from every universe Erwin surveyed through his machine – which was at once a tool to switch two instances of a person and a living, changing map of the known multiverse- Kronos had only ever crossed over through instances of one person. Through Erwin.

Levi stopped. He couldn't move for his deadened limbs. 

"I should know," Erwin said, and his face looked a little tired, a little haunted. "I've taken precautions that I'm more than willing to share with your own Erwin."

Still, something clawed at the back of Levi's head. "Why are you doing this? All of it? The explanations, the Threader, helping us with Intermipol-"

"Would you poison your own rivers?" Erwin asked.

"What? That' s stupid. And what does that have to do with-"

"We're more connected than you can imagine, Levi. The multiverse is as much a living, breathing system as any one ecosystem. So if Kronos claims yours-"

"Hah," Levi said. "So you've all been out for yourselves all this time."

Erwin smiled. "It can be a little of both."

Then there truly was a real chance Kronos could more easily cross over into his own universe through Erwin because of his weakened state post-reintegration. Which is why this Erwin, through Egret - along with everyone else - had so sorely wanted to save him in the first place, wanted Levi to save him.

Levi gritted his teeth. He should have saved him. They had wasted so much time. Intermipol was never the wolf. 

He should have disobeyed.

"He's a good man, Levi. And so are you."

Levi said nothing. He went on walking in step with him to the machine room and ignored his words.

Erwin put a hand on his shoulder, again, freely. “It's strange," he said ruefully. "But I feel like I've known you all my life, yet we've just met. And maybe," Erwin said as he stopped them momentarily to face him fully, "maybe you feel something similar. It's unfair of me to ask you to trust me. But I hope I can earn that trust.”

Levi considered everything Egret had done. All of it had been done under this Erwin's orders.

The Threader had more than halved casualty rates the world over. He'd had Egret smuggle Levi into Munich and coordinate the courthouse bugging and personnel rotation. He had offered to break Levi's Erwin out of reintegration at the expense of his own agents. He'd ordered Egret to switch Dragunov and take out a radical captain in downtown Manhattan to scatter the radical horde and get them to safety. He signed off on the delivery of the Severance Package.

He had done so much for them already. Levi's own Erwin trusted him, had all but given Levi clearance to welcome his input and experience without reservation. 

Maybe it was time to ask for help. The deprogrammer chief had said the same. Erwin had said the same.

And maybe they need it. Maybe they should have welcomed it long ago. Maybe it was time to stop running from whispers.

  


*

  


Mike woke up in forty-three minutes. Erwin knew because Nanaba looked like she meant to skewer Han for every minute past the first.

She rushed in a team of Survey medics they had contacted prior to make sure nothing came of the bumpy ride. Erwin sorely wanted to see Mike again, to speak to him, but he knew better than to interfere.

Han was recording their last thoughts at several times the rate of normal speech before getting ready to switch back. Eight months had passed for Hange since Han had switched that morning. Moblit was green with worry. Erwin knew he didn't look much better.

He wandered into the study. It was well past midnight, but he couldn't imagine sleeping now. Idly, he realized how long it's been since he'd been allowed anywhere alone. Deprogramming. Reintegration.He caught himself expecting the gentle intercom jingle that announced dinner or the daily prayer for the faithful. 

Past the memories of pastel walls and gentle orderlies was a scarlet haze. Day by day, it sharpened. And every day, traitorously, he remembered what it was like to live without expecting to die.

He checked his phone, but he knew Levi would be preoccupied with Jones and Isabel. At the thought of him, the memory of the almost-kiss surfaced and sufficiently mortified Erwin before he could push it away again. He shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have even touched him. He shouldn't make promises he couldn't keep, shouldn't pretend to be the man Levi wanted. The man he used to be. 

He was so sure he'd created enough distance between them after his equally embarrassing behavior in the deprogramming ward. Touching him, kissing his skin, joining their hands as if they had half a chance at that kind of life. As if he deserved to be the one to give that to Levi.

Erwin walked out of the study and sat outside Mike's room where medics and Han and Moblit and Nanaba walked in and out, back and forth. Hange and Mike had long chided him for sinking into his own thoughts for too long. Mother hens, he used to think. These days, though, he wasn't sure he disagreed.

Besides, there wasn't time for this. He was supposed to be untangling the mess that was these dreams and switches and machines.

Everything and everyone pointed to the now near certainty that both he and Levi did not belong to this universe. That they had somehow switched. The how was complicated by their world being a Core - it had already broken so many of Han's most tested, decades-long treatises and theories that accidental switching was not even that bizarre of a possibility. Nature didn't bow to reason.

Maybe he should have thought it all impossible on its face. Maybe there really was something in the water. Maybe this was one elaborate joke. 

Or maybe one of them just needed to wake up. Just like the hero in the movies. Just before everything went back to normal. When everything made sense again. 

Maybe the hero was Levi. Maybe he just had to wake up.

B ut Erwin knew he remembered his childhood. He remembered it with more clarity than he remembered his last meal. If he had to thank Intermipol for anything, it would be for that.

Levi's scar. The car accident. Dragunov's accident likewise. Conceivably, Levi could have switched then. In the hospital, maybe even while he was comatose, about fifteen years ago. For years, he had pinned his lack of knowledge or memory of his surroundings on brain trauma. No one had looked twice at his difficulty returning to what he knew before, what he was before, when it was now clear that he might have never known this world before. He had been all alone. No. he had Farlan. He had Isabel.

Dragunov had been all alone. 

Levi himself had admitted to hearing the doctors pronounce the two dead as he drifted in and out of himself, and later seeing the two virtually unharmed. It must have happened then. They had survived. But only in this universe.

Dragunov woke up alone. He must have mourned them, not knowing they had lived, that they were only a universe apart. Not knowing he had been replaced by another man.

Erwin wondered then, how he himself could have been switched. If it happened at all, it could have occurred sometime when his father had been taken. Erwin remembered being inconsolably shaken. Little had made sense after that. For years, he assumed it had been the toll of grief. And maybe it was, to an extent. And maybe that grief, maybe Levi's coma, had made it that much easier to switch. 

The pastel walls returned. Hot meals. Warm smiles. 

No. He was past this. He wasn't going back. He could never go back. 

But oh, how he wanted. How he even fantasized it, in idle moments. Remembered what peace felt, sounded, tasted like. 

And he knew he needed to find another kind of peace. Something - someone - to crush the phantom of Intermipol's dollhouse. Someone to help him forget. Someone to walk him through the courtyard again. 

"Sir."

A medic roused him. Mike asked for him. Immediately. 

Erwin was in the room before the medic could say another word. Mike and Nanaba startled as he swung open the door. Mike looked him up and down and swallowed thickly, eyes shining.

"You look like shit," Mike said. 

Mike drew his mouth into a thin line as if to keep from laughing, because it was funny. Because that should have been Erwin's line. Because Mike did look like shit. Bruises and scuffs and scratches lined every inch of him, and yet the light in his eyes alone blinded Erwin, shone straight through his own bruised soul. Mike stood and wobbled a little as he crossed the room to embrace him, and it hit Erwin, in that moment and in that one alone, that Mike was back. Mike, his Mike, his best friend, was alive. He was safe. He was here. And he was squeezing the life out of him. 

Nanaba shut the door behind her. The soft click was like a switch. Erwin's shoulders fell. He returned the embrace with arms laced with tremors and tipped his head against Mike's shoulder and shook with the kind of sobs he wouldn't even permit himself in his own company.

Erwin fell into a chair. Mike lay again on the bed. Neither spoke. There wasn't any need. Not for a while.

"He should've saved you," Mike said to himself, almost too low for Erwin to hear. But he heard.

"Don't," Erwin said. "I gave him an order."

"Orders can be disobeyed."

"You made that abundantly clear."

Mike scratched his nose and nodded. 

Erwin deflated. "Sorry-"

"What?" Mike scoffed, rising to sit. "No, I'm actually pretty pissed that you're not pissed. I'd be pissed at me, Erwin. Royally. If it were you, I'd hang that shit over your head for the rest of your life. Friend runs off in the middle of a century-defining mutiny. You're not angry enough, Erwin."

"I'll schedule it," Erwin said wryly.

Mike laughed. Erwin missed the sound.

"I'll hold you to it. I mean it," he said as he reached across the bed and pulled a tablet toward him. "I want the chewing out of the century. Even-" he said as he tapped something into the tablet, "-after this." 

He held it out to Erwin.

Erwin eyed it warily before taking it and turning it towards him. It was a map of the continental United States. More than a dozen markers sat across the Rockies and southwest. "Mike, what-"

"Read it."

Erwin examined each location. A military base. A training academy. An air force academy. Another military base. A third military base. Another-

"Mike-" Erwin started.

"Bastards scanned my ring so they knew it was tech, but they couldn't crack it. Saw 'em chuck it but the homing beacon might still work. It'll be good if we can find it. It'll have more information. Notes. Figures-"

"What are you saying? What did you find?"

The locations were where Mike had smelled them by the hundreds – people who smelled just like Foley and Beckert. Erwin lowered the tablet.

This meant the Department of Defense was almost certainly complicit with Egret. Or that Egret had infiltrated the Department of Defense. 

As well as he could remember, Mike said he was caught near El Paso. The machine, Erwin figured, must have been nearby. Maybe not in the same city, but certainly in the region. He doubted his kidnappers would have crossed too many state lines and risked being found with a body in the trunk. And there was something else he wanted to know. 

Erwin frowned. "Why would Egret do this-"

"Nan gave me a rundown on this Egret of yours. Much as I don't like some random bird-themed number popping in and out right when you need her like some armed and dangerous fairy godmother, I don't think it was her."

Erwin's brows rose. "How do you figure?"

"Doesn't fit her MO. Too sloppy for her, too. You know her. That, and it didn't sound like they were under orders. More like they were spooked. Panicked. Managed to play dead and eavesdrop on 'em so long I almost wanted to get a jump on them." He shrugged noncommittally. "There were too many."

"Is that you being reasonable, Mike?"

"Don't tell Nan," Mike said conspiratorially. "But yeah. Looked like an overworked bunch. And chances are, they were too low rung to recognize who I was. Or they just didn't give a shit."

Erwin didn't like this. Sure, Egret was secretive, understandably so. But this required explanation. They've wasted enough time not trusting Egret and the other Erwin when they could have helped them so much more and with far more ease. But trust went both ways. This question demanded an answer.

And he wanted to know why her people were shoulder to shoulder with the Department of Defense. 

  


*

  


"Levi, this way!"

Levi stopped. Isabel stopped too, irritating the stiff, drowsy passengers streaming from the plane. "Levi?"

He smiled at her, tugged on a strand of hair playfully. "Go ahead. I got some business near here."

Her face fell. "You won't walk us home?"

Levi looked away. He couldn't look at her when she made that face. Jones turned when she realized the other two weren't following. She cocked her head in question.

"Be good, okay?" Levi said.

She made a face.

"Please."

"Okay, okay."

Levi blinked rapidly. He wouldn't do this now. Not here. Isabel frowned. "Levka..." she goaded in sing-song. 

He embraced her. She froze for a moment, not expecting it. Then her arms rose, too, and squeezed.

"I missed you," he said, barely able to speak over the pressure in his throat. "I love you, okay? I didn't...I didn't say it. Before."

Isabel giggled. "Come on," she laughed as Levi finally drew away. "You'll be back soon?"

"Yeah," he said. "Real soon."

He watched them go. He wiped his eyes.

A crowd milled by the passport check, though few actual passports were being checked. She was still so obvious.

He pushed through the crowd and came to a couple looking like they had walked straight out of an American travel site for Caribbean destinations, enormous hats and smears of suntan lotion and all. The man met his eye and glanced at the woman, her back to Levi, red bikini string peeking out of her shirt. The man shook his head at her, so inconspicuously that Levi may not have even noticed had he not been looking right at him. The woman turned around.

"You know," Egret sighed, "I'm committed to this disguise. I'm fully prepared to take one for the team and sunbathe for a week in Bermuda to get the job done-"

"Take me to the Pond."

"Pushy. And since when do you know what we call that machine-"

"Quit rambling, bird shit."

She scowled when she realized. "It's you. You're not supposed to be here." She moved closer to whisper, nose wrinkling in disgust, "this shit wasn't in the mission brief so you've got about three seconds to tell me why you're off your leash before I put you to sleep-"

"You're off the op. Take me to the Pond. Won't ask again."

Egret rolled her eyes. She turned to the wall of a man beside her. "Take care of this."

She slung her bag over her shoulder and walked away with a haughty sway. But not too far. She stopped and turned back when she saw that the man hadn't moved.

"Hey," she snapped. "Direct order here-"

"You," Levi said to the man, "put one finger up your nose and the other hand on your ass and spell You're Fired to the tune of Walking On Sunshine."

She gaped as the man did just that. 

"Look," Levi said, "he even spelled it out for you. We on one page? Or should I make the other three dozen agents watching us sing you a song? You into  a capella?"

She contacted her other agents. Every last one returned with silence.

"Fuck.”

  


*

  


An agent appeared with a slight lisp and a heavy brow and marched in step with the other Erwin as he escorted Levi to the machine room through a wide-set hall. It was dim, lined with floor-to-ceiling windows, but the city beyond it shined. 

They were ridiculously high. Levi could see around for miles. He watched massive clouds roil past the outskirts of the city as the agent briefed Erwin on his and that - personnel shifts, product licensing - the usual drudgery. It was normal. Familiar. 

When the agent had gone, Levi smirked at something particularly familiar.

"The Black Queen is in position?" Levi repeated with a scoff. "You two and your shitty chess puns. Eagle One and Eagle Two too pedestrian for you? Who did he mean, anyway? Egret?" 

Erwin smiled and unlocked a door taller than himself once over. The room it revealed was less a room than a stadium. Winding, living, breathing through every inch of it was the machine.

Its heart belonged to a pod in the dead center of the room. Levi watched water ripple delicately and climb its glass walls with every step he neared it, and understood why Erwin had named it the Pond.

  


*

  


Egret shot dirty looks at him from where the agents had handcuffed her to an old pipe.

Levi watched the Pond and swallowed, hard. An agent with a heavy brow nodded at him when the preparations were completed.

He watched the roiling waters. He ran an idle hand through it. There was no undoing this. 

" This is a joke.  I'm innocent! I did everything right!" Egret called out suddenly. "I did everything he said!"

He lifted his hand out of the water. "I know," he said without heat, without malice, before sinking into the Pond.

  


*

  


Isabel and Jones came back, but not Levi. 

Isabel relayed that he had some sort of business to wrap up before returning. Erwin smiled in thanks and stifled his disappointment. He needed to go under soon. To know Kronos' method of infestation and not take the simplest step toward stopping it crossed from irresponsible and ventured into malicious. 

But Erwin was selfish, still. He wanted to say goodbye. 

Erwin and Mike studied the map Mike had marked in the safe house - they may as well take advantage of the added security while they waited for Levi to return and for Han to wake up. Jones took off to meet her family. Isabel convinced them she was unharmed and needed no immediate attention, though she did agree to sit with a Survey deprogrammer in the morning. She bounced from Erwin and Mike to Han and Moblit and back again, too restless for sleep, too distracted for anything else.

He face had drawn tighter each time she returned. Every atom of joy in her had drained out right in front of them. Mike looked from one to the other when Isabel came in again, stood, and shut the door.

Isabel blinked after him owlishly. "Are you done with that?" She said, pointing to the tablet.

Erwin didn't like ambushing her. But this couldn't wait for the deprogrammer. Mike noticed it. Erwin, too. Something about her distracted despondency was terribly familiar.

"Is there anything I could do?" he asked, and she must not have expected it, must not have prepared an answer like the one she had for everyone's well-meaning Are you okay?'s.

But she recovered quickly and shrugged. "I'm okay." She swung her legs back and forth from her spot in the armchair.

Erwin smiled at a sudden memory. 

She caught it. Isabel cocked her head. "What?" 

"I just remembered that game we played. In the gardens. The riddle game, do you remember?"

She looked away, a line of irritation creasing her brow. "I'm not a kid. Don't gotta try tricking me into talking."

Erwin shrugged, rolling the hurt off his shoulders. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply-"

She groaned and shoved her head into her hands. "Stop being nice. I shouldn't've...that was mean."

"I've heard meaner."

She made a sound that might have been a laugh, muffled as she propped her arms on the chair rests and shoved her face into them. "I need to...I need." She surfaced, flushed with concentration. "I said I wouldn't. I wouldn't tell."

Erwin moved to sit nearer. Something was very wrong. "Isabel. You're okay. You're safe here."

"He said...not even you. Not to tell you...but he didn't. He- is he okay? Is Levi okay?"

Erwin doesn't begin to understand, much less know what to say.

Isabel visibly struggled. "It's like there are two versions of what I remember, I can't...I know he's sick, I gave him the medicine on the plane, but I don't remember....I don't remember how I know- I don't even remember promising him, I just know...I..."

Erwin was stunned into silence. He knew this. He'd heard it from others countless times. He'd said it himself, thought it even now. She had been reintegrated. False memories planted. And sloppily.

But she and Jones had been in Egret's custody. Egret was under direct orders from Dragunov's Erwin.

“Isabel," Erwin said, schooling his rising panic from his voice, "tell me every version you know. Even the ones that sound strange or impossible. What medicine, Isabel?"

Erwin didn't remember Levi being sick or showing it so in any way. And he would have known if Levi had been taking medication. None of it made sense. 

"I thought I remembered him...him telling me to put it in his drink whenever he forgot to but now I...now it's not clear anymore. It's like it never happened, but I was so sure...wasn't he sick? I don't even remember how he was sick I just...I don't even remember putting the medicine in my bag-" She rummaged in her bag. She showed him the white powder. 

Mike knocked once and showed himself in. "Just got a call from Charlie with the DOD," he said severely. "Someone claimed to be a relative with security clearance and visited her last night. An hour after they left, Beckert's swinging from the ceiling. Said they're still investigating but figured we'd want to kn-"

"Mike," Erwin said, holding the nearly depleted vial in his open palm and barely hearing his own voice. "What am I holding?"

Mike wrinkled his nose. "It's Halcion. Why do you have-" 

"Find him," Erwin said, and he couldn't hide the tremor in his hands anymore, in his voice. "We need to find Levi."

*

  


Levi stepped inside. A connective net of tendrils snaked across his limbs. Dragunov's Erwin had explained their purpose. It didn't make the prodding any more comfortable. 

The water rushed past his ears as Erwin smiled reassuringly through the glass.

It felt just like coming out of a vision. The gurgling. The tightness in his chest. The sensation of drowning before getting his breath back in one undammed burst, as if emerging from a still pool.

Before he could even grow properly uncomfortable, the tendrils slipped away. The water receded, and the glass pod hissed open. Levi reached blindly for the curved rim of the pod as he blinked the water out of his eyes. 

Dragunov's Erwin stood where he had before. He had barely moved at all. And Levi hadn't gone anywhere, either. He hadn't switched. But he'd felt it. He was so sure he had felt it. 

Levi wiped the water from his face and opened his mouth to tell him it hadn't worked.

But the man who looked like Erwin smiled, then, and it wasn't familiar anymore. It wasn't Erwin's smile. And though he looked entirely the same and though his voice possessed Erwin's same lilt and tenor, there was something  more . Something new. He smiled like he had been waiting for this moment for fifteen years. 

"Welcome home," Kronos said.

  


*

  


When Levi had stepped out to take Egret's call, Erwin asked Han if a person who had been switched for years - for as long as he and Levi - could ever switch back.

Han rubbed their neck. “Sure. No problem. Just that this kind of irritation on the transuniversal membrane from all those mismatched years creates...you could think of it like scar tissue, or a callous. Longer you're mismatched, thicker it gets. So if you went the full mile, somehow dunked both sides of yourself into the machine at once and configured the machine to correct the original switch...I mean, I've only seen it happen a few times with people mismatched for four, five months, tops, and..."

“And?”

"Any longer, and they could never-"

Levi had come back into the room. "She's coming home," he said, face slack with disbelief. Erwin rose, his attention soundly stolen.

Han scratched their shin idly.

"-switch back," they finished.

  



	21. Someone Old

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [ Snow Ghosts: The Hunted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxay1y0Blv4&ab_channel=Houndstooth)  
> ♫ [ Kaiti Kink - Under the Iron Sky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngFeolgNeg4&ab_channel=kukaamuka)  
> ♫ [MMFR OST - Storm is Coming](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uX9h7dJTs)  
>  

Levi was off grid. His ring's homing beacon had been disabled. Nanaba suggested an internal missing persons alert and a global manhunt for Egret.

They couldn't. If the DOD was soaked through with Egret's people, it would be naive to assume the Survey Corps wasn't. They needed a small, hand-picked operation. Mike agreed to vet the team himself.

It would be slower, far slower than if they had more eyes, but they knew Egret's game. Egret didn't know that they knew. Chances are, she assumed Isabel wouldn't have spilled, at least not this soon. They needed to proceed as if they knew nothing was wrong.

Erwin ducked into the study for a moment to be alone with his heart, willing it to stop the drumbeat it carried for the entire last hour as he, Nanaba and Mike made preparations.

Nanaba and Mike left the safe room for the city survey division to select and coordinate the team soon after. They forbade Erwin from following and enthusiastically reminded him of how little he had slept in the last few days. He argued, but even he knew it was mostly for show. He was running on fumes.

Isabel was taken to the deprogramming center. She went quietly. Erwin reassured her as best he could, but he knew he was hardly the best person for that right then. He was sure he wasn't doing a stellar job of reassuring himself.

They couldn't pin down Jones either. Mike selected another team to track her, too.

Erwin couldn't sleep. He pulled data, analyzed and tracked what he could - flight patterns, dispatchers, security footage. He called in  every favor, everything from everyone who ever owed him, everyone he'd ever met, and he let the phone ring though he doubted Mike couldn't just call Moblit and confirm just how little Erwin took their admonishments seriously.

As Erwin searched, so the pit in his chest grew. He missed him. He hated how he missed him. How many times had he turned around to say something to him, how often had he turned just to be sure that he was there? And on any other day, he would have been reassured, would have hidden his smile behind a yawn or a none-too convincing cough. But there was no one to hide from anymore. Not even from himself. 

Farlan called quickly enough, having observed their patterns through his own networks and drawing enough of the right conclusions as to what was going on, and it took a direct order from Nanaba to forbid him from sending his own search teams and jeopardizing their attempts to catch Egret off guard.

Hange walked into the study that Erwin repurposed into his office. They had woken up in the middle of the ordeal and waved off all their prolonged greetings and Are You Okays to jump into the search as avidly as any one of them. They pulled up their own contacts, and the search went on.

They decide that unless proven otherwise, Dragunov's Erwin and Kronos are one and the same. 

It was Hange's idea. Erwin resisted. 

He needed more to believe it. More time. More evidence. To believe that, through Egret, he had been whispering to them after all. To believe he had been in front of their noses all this time. 

In less than a day, Levi was found crossing state lines in a straight line back to New York on a bike reported missing from a safe house and found by a passing scan of his plate. It was as if he'd never intended to hide at all.

Erwin and Mike's security detail met him halfway through Jersey. They blocked the road, though Levi didn't look like he intended to blow past them, didn't look anything but relieved to see them. Why not? And when they got out of the reinforced car, Levi only scowled and asked what had taken them so long.

He looked like Levi. He talked like Levi. He was Levi.

But hoping didn't make it so. Levi punched Mike's shoulder gamely and hopped into the car. 

As they drove off, Levi recalled what had happened. He'd passed out on the plane and woken up across the country, carted off by Egret's lackies. He'd broken free, found a bike in a Survey supply cache, and made his way back.

If it was Dragunov, he was doing a fantastic job of convincing them he wasn't. He answered every one of Mike's questions, questions Levi alone would know. Mike was impressed.

Erwin wasn't. Dragunov also dreamed. He would have seen more than enough to be able to put together convincing answers. This wasn't working.

 Erwin couldn't ask him how they'd met. He couldn't ask him to describe the day they parted, or the one when they reunited. Dragunov could have seen anything and everything. 

Black forest rushed past them. Mike rode shotgun.  Erwin shared the back seat with Levi.  Wind whipped at Levi's hair, and then it wasn't dark anymore. It wasn't Jersey anymore. His own hands were on the wheel and the sun was shining and Levi had just blown through an impromptu shooting course at an upstate range. A week ago, Erwin had found a stranger in his home, a drawl attached to a man sprawled on his bed like it belonged to him, like Erwin belonged to him.

And a week from then, he would follow his every order.

But the branches that whipped past now weren't sunlit, weren't dappled. They were driving on route 78. It was a summer evening in 2091, and if any one of them possessed the barest clairvoyance, they would have thanked every dream and every nightmare before November for being what it was and no more.

Erwin couldn't stand to look for long. Every atom in him screamed that this was him, that this was his Levi.

He'd have to find something more recent, much more recent. He doubted Dragunov would sleep right before a mission like this. Twenty four hours might be enough of a buffer. He didn't wonder long what he might use. His gut roiled.

Erwin leaned across to whisper in his ear. 

“I'm sorry if I was too forward when I – when I kissed you before you left for your flight.” he said, and he waited, and he hoped.

Levi smirked, and Erwin hoped.

“Gave me something nice to think about,” Levi - Dragunov - said.

Erwin forced himself to smile. He was good at that.

They drove into the city, drove past bread lines circling several blocks and blocking traffic. The spike in titan and radical incursions following the fall of the Survey Corps had been mercifully short, but not short enough.

The destruction had shut down bridges and roads. Transportation of food and medicine slowed to a crawl. Hundreds of millions lost their families, their jobs, their homes, their cars, their own lives.  

Titan and radical incursions fell dramatically week after week. The Survey Corps was never so efficient in its history. It was never so revered. Erwin would have given all his limbs to see casualty numbers this low in his lifetime, and it had happened within a month. A world without titans waited for them. It was coming, and coming faster than anyone thought possible, than Erwin ever thought possible. 

But that world will still hunger. It will still go to war. If not with titans, then with itself. 

For so long, Erwin thought it would be enough. Eliminating titans would be enough. It would solve everything. It would grant humanity the wisdom to move forward with kindness and generosity. It would grant it the perspective to help their fellow man instead of fearing him. 

Dragunov stirred and watched the lines. Kids clutching empty stomachs chucked pebbles at passing cars. 

Erwin met Mike's eye in the rear-view mirror. When they arrived at the underground parking garage of the New York division, Mike rolled down the windows. A sniper planted a tranq in Dragunov's neck.

 

Erwin's side still burned from how close the man had been, How neatly he had fit into his side, how hot he'd burned against him. And Erwin had put an arm around him and stroked his hair, because Erwin could play pretend, because he was good at that.

They keep him in New York. While it wasn't headquarters, given Survey's history, it remained one of their largest divisions in the world. With the most extensive maximum security cells in the world. And the largest isolation ward.

Erwin ordered Hange to force the Halcion formula on Dragunov. They objected. He needed to be heard. He needed due process.

"You're not even gonna wait til he's up?" Hange demanded as they paced up and down outside the medical ward where Dragunov slept off the sedative. He'd been strapped to the bed.

"We are not negotiating. Levi was changed against his will," Erwin said, hands clasped behind his back, eyes forward, parade rest. Mike leaned against a wall with his head down and Nanaba stood between them, arms crossed. "Every second that passes that we refuse to do what's just is another that we betray him-"

Hange stopped in front of him. "It's not gonna work," they said with vehement finality. "Han said-"

"Make it work," Erwin said.

"You're not commander anymore."

Everyone turned to Nanaba. 

"Nan, come on," Hange started, "It isn't right. Just imagine.."

"I don't have to," Nanaba said. "And neither does Mike. Do it."

But Dragunov had stirred before they reached their decision, and though Hange torpedoed their orders and revealed to him what they intended to do, the man agreed to take it without argument.

It became clear why soon enough. It didn't work. 

Hange delivered the news and didn't look particularly shocked at the outcome. Their attempt to hide their I-Told-You-So face was admirable but less than successful. They offered them all a crash course in Han's experiences with long-term mismatches. Specifically, the part where correcting the offending switch removed the chance of every switching again. Dragunov was taken to an isolation ward. Interrogations were to take place internally. 

Food started to lose its taste. Sunshine ripped shivers from his limbs. Erwin could smell rain when there was none, taste blood when none was there.

Beckert's suicide was still under investigation. No note. No motive. Hange hadn't yet known, having returned in the middle of the search for Levi. They asked for a few hours alone. 

They split for a night to recharge. To let themselves breathe. Mike hadn't yet properly recovered from his own switch. He slipped into a nearly indecipherable dialect every so often and flinched at the barest draft, much less a hand on his shoulder or his name when it was called. Nanaba must have caffeine arteries for redistributing her duties at Johannesburg, searching for Mike, then Levi without half a break. Hange was technically more than a hundred years old, and when they thought no one was watching, they almost looked it. 

Erwin was doing fine. He could smell the rain.

The four met again at the safe house that morning. Hange tucked their legs beneath them on the kitchen counter top. Mike leaned against the table. Erwin and Nanaba sat opposite.

Mike gave Erwin a dissatisfied sweeping look when he'd walked in and glanced at Nanaba in a way that made Erwin suspect Mike wouldn't leave until he personally tucked him in.

It was because of Beckert that they had Han. All their wisdom. All their experience. It was because of her, too, that Hange survived. Had they taken the last of their own Halcion instead of Beckert's calculated dose, a coma would have been the least of their problems.   

Maybe, Nanaba suggested, Egret just figured she was too much of a risk to keep around. Maybe she never needed her at all. Egret's "saving" of Isabel and Jones from Intermipol during the raids was made less suspicious, and her holding them made less damning under the appearance of being afraid for Beckert's safety. 

Hange suggested they retire the messenger's name now that they know their master.

"Since we're talking semantics and logistics," Nanaba said, leaning back, "we need an administrative split between Survey affairs and this dream business. I can't babysit two universes. I'm good," she said wryly. "But not that good."

Mike snorted. "Where's the line between the two?"

"There is none," Erwin agreed.

"Then start drawing, Erwin," Nanaba said, "because if we start shitting where we eat, I'll be commander in name only."

Erwin was stunned into silence. "I would never-"

"Oh, not obviously," she said. "Not outright. Don't forget, Erwin. I know you. Everyone here knows you. You get something in your head and it'll never come out. You'll get there no matter who or what's in your way. And it doesn't take precognition to know this Kronos is about to make my job very, very difficult. So I'd like to know that you'll at least try to not make me your second Intermipol."

Mike sighed. "Nan-"

"She's right," Hange said. There was no malice to the words. They were tired words. Hange looked down at their hands, picking at their nails. "Han showed me how  to peek in on the universes they surveyed. Drop into people's heads for a little while. They don't know you're in there. You can't yell and shout to let 'em know. But you see what they see." Hange scratched their nose. "You feel what they feel."

"I only ever dropped into instances of myself," Hange amended quickly when the room went cold. "But what I'm- what I'm saying is it doesn't even take that to see what's in front of us," Hange said. They laughed suddenly. "So many...it happened it so many ways."

Erwin's breath caught. "You've seen what happens," he said with mounting awe. "You've seen the future."

"I mean...it's more like..." 

Mike stiffened. "Does that mean there are infinite instances of Kronos? Infinite-" 

"I don't know," Hange said. "But..."

"Hange," Erwin said, all but pleading, "if you know something-" 

"That's the problem," they said,  Every time I surveyed a universe I was sure would tell me what happens, I couldn't drop down. I...I don't think its happened yet. Anywhere. Anytime."

"The future?" Nanaba asked. 

"Whatever's gonna happen here, right here, with Kronos and us," Hange amended, then turned to Erwin, brows drawn, "Kronos and you, Erwin. We assumed parallel universes were infinite, that there's no logic to them, no structure, no law, but I surveyed thousands. Tens of thousands," they said, and a chill swept through Erwin, "and I could drop inside to watch - but only if the timeline wasn't farther ahead of this one. I couldn't find the future, our future. Not one where- where Erwin's alive. I tried, I swear," Hange said, face crumpling. "I wanted to come back with all the answers, but I just couldn't-" 

They cut off, blinking rapidly, angrily, as their throat closed, as Mike moved to lay a steady hand on their shoulder.

"I think we really are a Core," Hange said, "I think-"

"Whatever happens here," Nanaba finished, "happens everywhere." 

Mike huffed. "No pressure."

Erwin shrugged. "Doesn't change a thing. Our objective is the same. Eliminate Kronos." 

No one spoke, as if waiting for Erwin to finish. He already had.

Mike whispered something to Nanaba. She stood and left, looping her arm with Hange's as she went and dragging them out with her. Mike stretched idly. "Erwin," Mike started, "I haven't been back too long, so you're gonna have to fill me in on some details, maybe confirm a few things I've been hearing..."

"What is it?" 

"It's been...two, three weeks since you've been released from deprogramming? Temporary release, by the way. You shoulda been back a week ago. I checked. Shoulda checked in every few days, too, but we both know-"  

"There's no time for that."

"You'll reverse all the progress you've made in your recovery if you keep this up. Kronos doesn't give points for martyrdom. Let us help you."

"I'm already asking too much of all of you-"

"Damn it, Erwin, he's our friend too. We all fought together. We all know what it's like to lose one of our own. Don't claim this, I know you are. This wasn't your fault."

Erwin didn't speak, but something on his face must have said enough for Mike to groan.

"Erwin, don't-"

"I told him. Mike. I told him he could trust Egret. Right before the flight. That he could trust Dragunov's Erwin." Erwin rose. He could barely raise his voice over the pressure in his throat. "I told him to trust Kronos."

There it was. In the air. Spoken aloud. It was real now.

"You didn't know-"

"I killed him with incompetence."

"Don't do this. He's MIA. We don't know that he's dead."

Erwin wasn't keen on appreciating the difference between the two. Hange had told them the switch wouldn't work. They knew it wouldn't work.

 

Mike interrogated Dragunov. 

Erwin coordinated the hunt for Egret in the meantime. It was a simple questioning, a preliminary thing, but Mike insisted that Erwin not be the first to hear what the man had to say, if he intended to cooperate at all.

Mike found Erwin in the overhauled security division.

"What did you learn?" Erwin asked.

Mike only shook his head. He inclined his head and turned to go, trusting Erwin to follow.

He didn't.

Mike turned back. "Erwin-"

"Is he talking?"

"Yes. Enthusiastically."

Erwin closed the distance between them. "Then what did he say? Mike?"

Mike's jaw worked. He looked at him searchingly, like he hadn't seen him in years though they'd parted only hours ago. Mike shook his head. "It's too much."

Dragunov leaned back in the footage. When led in, he'd spared a disinterested glance at every camera in the room, hidden or no, and it would have been easy to call it a challenge, to call it aggression. But it wasn't even suggestion. He didn't look at them again. He sat and waited, so quiet and still that the cuffs chaining him to the table gave not one satisfying clink.

He made no threats, brokered no insults. He hadn't scoffed or snorted once.  

"A perfect little messenger," Mike said under his breath as Erwin watched the recording. He had only to look up, and there Dragunov sat beyond the false mirror in the flesh, moving no more than he did on the screen. Erwin watched Mike sit across from him in the footage. Dragunov spoke first.

"I'll talk."

And when the recording finished, neither spoke. Erwin's collar chafed. There was too little air in the room.

Erwin's breath came shallow. "I need to talk to him."

"Not now. Give yourself a minute. Come back tomo-"

"No. Now. And call Hange here. We were lied to."

Mike frowned. "You believe him over-"

"No. But I want to know why Han neglected to tell us a few things."

The door opened with a metallic whine. Erwin took his seat and forced himself to look this man in the eye.

Dragunov peered back, unreadable. When he spoke, it was a little different from his voice in the recording. It was lower. It approximated sympathy. "You don't have to look at me."

 "I don't need your permission."

Dragunov gave a small shrug, as if it didn't matter to him one way or the other. With nothing else to distract him, Erwin found himself noticing the less obvious differences. He held his jaw at a defiant jut like Levi, but at a slightly different angle. His brows drew together even at rest, like Levi's, but the right canted upward a bit. It was Levi. It wasn't Levi.

"You've been stunningly cooperative," Erwin said.

Dragunov waited, though it was clear what Erwin wanted.

"Why?" Erwin pressed.

Dragunov sighed. "You've heard the tapes. You know what I said. You know we only want the best-"

"Best is relative."

Erwin did hear the tapes. He heard Dragunov explain to Mike that decades ago, Kronos made contact with this universe through surrogates and switched both Erwin and Levi through the Pond, as they called their machine, without either knowing. All to catalyze the dreams. All for a chance at switching into Erwin's head.

There was an obvious hiccup. Erwin dreamed of the walls. It was only Levi who had dreamed of Kronos' universe. It would be impossible for Kronos to switch with Erwin as things stood now. 

Nothing was impossible, Dragunov had said.

To Erwin, he said, "Mr. Smith hopes we can-"

 "Kronos," Erwin corrected.

"He doesn't like that name."

"I'm not in a position to care what he likes."

Dragunov looked down. "He had to. I told you why he had to."

 

He'd explained to Mike that the titanic virus Kronos synthesized and released into one universe after another was designed to pair with a binding agent – the so-called cure, a misnomer if there ever was one. Once the bond formed and stabilized, the body and mind transformed. The immune system grew more complex by orders of magnitude. Cellular regeneration rates rose likewise. Neural synapses that naturally withered with age strengthened instead. Aging itself slowed to a crawl. 

The initial virus was the bullet. The bonding agent, the chamber. Without direction, the virus acted too quickly, spread every which way. Without control, it bowed the human body into a bloated perversion of itself.  

"Then why release the virus first?" Mike had asked. "And what's with all those other universes he'd introduced the virus into and then abandoned?"

"The bonding agent can only be synthesized with tissue samples from infected participants-"

"You mean subjects?" Mike had said.

"No. They were always volunteers. Mr. Smith never intended to let it spread. He was always careful. But to have the means to house the participants, to have the kind of equipment to synthesize the binding agent, to have the time, the resources, the personnel, the privacy - there was always a complication. He could never get it done in time, could never do it without someone knocking on the door. Either the law got involved and released or euthanized the participants, or some sick fucks got a hold of it and decided they could let it loose and make a profit off titans instead. And what a surprise - a cure would hurt their margins."

"That last one sounds personal."

"Yeah." He shook his head. "You all assume he's some god or monster or whatever. You name him after your myths like he's some boogeyman, like he's a ghost. He's a man. He's always just been a man. Same as your Erwi-"

"One of our own," Mike interrupted, "reported that the Erwin in their universe was sabotaged by Kronos. And then the same thing happens to a second instance of Erwin who had switched them over just before their universe became lost to titans."

"How so?"

Mike had been quiet for a moment. "Whispers. Suggestions. Headaches and-"

"That's it?" Dragunov had said. "Whispers? Are you hearing yourself?"

"I'm inclined to believe a lot more than that now that the multiverse and general telepathy are on the table."

Dragunov licked his lips, drew them in to keep from smiling, but his eyes betrayed him. "You gonna believe in vampires now, too? Werewolves, fairies? Yeah, I don't envy you the steep learning curve, but you kids will have to keep up. Mr. Smith was long gone by the time titans propagated in those universes. He knew when he was beat, when it was too late to save them."

"That's his method, then? Use all these universes as his personal petri dishes?"

"You're not-" Dragunov started heatedly, then leaned back to steady his breathing. "You're not seeing the big picture. No. He doesn't just "use" these universes. He watches. He tries to understand. He learns your languages, your cultures, your methods, he learns what makes you tick so he can help you-"

"By releasing a virus-"

"By trusting them to let him complete the formula. For them. He wants nothing, needs nothing in return."

"Then why go to all the trouble?"

Dragunov drew his lips inward again, but this time, it was to curb the promise made by his deepening scowl. He breathed out slowly. "Maybe he shouldn't. Maybe you don't deserve him."

Mike opened his mouth, but Dragunov went on, leaning forward. "We're not blind. We know what your stunt with Intermipol did."

"And what did it do?"

"Read your own news. Hell, just look outside, I saw the lines. They stretch around this exact block. Round every block. People are either hungry or mad or dead. You did that."

"It was necessary to-"

"Necessary," Dragunov interrupted. "There's an interesting word."

Mike leaned back and twirled his pen idly. "Am I jumping the gun here or are you about to equate our campaign against a terrorist organization with your boss' genocides?"

"Genocide. Another interesting word. Tell me, why did you overthrow Intermipol?"

"I'll ask the questions."

Dragunov tsked. "Same reason we helped you overthrow them," he answered himself. "They lied. They profited off their own lies, off reintegration, off the weak-"

"And Kronos doesn't?"

"Profit?" Dragunov scowled. "You think he does this for profit?"

"Why then?"

"How long can a person survive without water?"

Mike sighed. "What does that have to do with-"

"Three days. Max. No food, three weeks. That sound right?"

"Point?"

Dragunov leaned forward. "Three months. A person with Titania, the virus bonded with the agent, a person who looks no different, feels no different, who's human in every way you care to measure it - can go three months without water."

Mike had stared at him for a long moment. Then he laughed softly. "You got me," he said. "I  _Would_ believe in fairies over this-"

"Three years without food."

"Okay. That's enough-"

"Ever lost someone to cancer, Mike? Ever seen a buddy lose an arm?"

Mike quieted. 

"Yeah," Dragunov said quietly. "None of that either. Cancer's gone. Arm grows back. Hell, we've seen brains grow back. Do you get it now? Do you get what that does to these industries that rely on people getting hungry and thirsty and tired and mad? They starve. And they die. And then just maybe this fucking species can survive past the twenty-first century."

"You're telling me Kronos is just the most altruistic son of a bitch this side of the multiverse, and that he's hopping universes like some jacked up missionary trying to make us misinformed peons accept his miracles."

"Personally, I'd call you idiots for dragging it out this long. If you asked me."

"Good thing I didn't." Mike crossed his arms. "Nice try. We already know humanity survives well past this century. You can't tell me you fell for that act - Kronos claiming he's the one thing standing between humanity and extinction-"

Dragunov smiled. "3713."  

Mike stilled.

"Yeah. That's Mr. Smith's favorite. That was one of the few universes where it worked."

"But there were still titans in-"

"Once you're infected, you have a coupla months til the first half of Titania cooks your insides. Wait too long to take the second half and it'll be too late. I don't know how you know about 3713 but chances are whoever you met is a lot older than they look." They grinned wider at Mike's face, which the camera couldn't see. "Yeah. Looks like whoever you contacted just...skipped over a few details," he said with mock concern.

"I assume telling us all this is meant to foster some kind of understanding between us. Goodwill, even."

"Smarter than you look."

"Then why switch Levi against his will?"

"Got you to listen to me, didn't it?"

"If I remember right, it was you and your surrogate, Egret, who wouldn't stay in one place long enough for us to talk in any meaningful way."

"I'm not sure what the currency exchange rate is between us exactly, but Mr. Smith's head is worth at least several billion of your dollars right now. So yeah. We're feeling a little careful on both sides."

"That doesn't answer my question. Why not just sit down with us? Why not go through the proper channels from the begin-"

"Why didn't you go through through the proper channels to depose Intermipol?"

"It's not the same-"

"Keep telling yourself that. We're short on time here, chief. You might not have noticed, but our timelines are perfectly synced. One second here is one second there. That's not an accident. And it's not forever, either. The more we bitch about what we could or should have done, the more the lock slips."

"What does he want, then?"

"To end. Fucking. Hunger," Dragunov said through gritted teeth. "To give the bottom rungs of humanity the edge they need to stick it to the top. To save this stupid greedy species because he's got it in his head that we deserve it. Our objectives aren't as different as you want them to be."

"Did you use Titania yourself?" 

"No. I've no right to it before anyone else. The young, the old. The hungry, the sick. That's the priority."

"Noble, I guess. Did Kronos?"

"An older version. He tested it on himself. Only himself."

Mike didn't speak for a moment. "Why not use participants like before?"

Dragunov hesitated. It was the first time he had. He looked down. "I told him I didn't want unnecessary deaths. We couldn't find more participants because the chances of them being spies for the sisters, or just wanting the cash they offered, it was too much of a risk. We could always lie to people, tell 'em we're testing something completely different, completely benign, but I didn't want that either."

"Just like that? He just...respected your wishes at cost to himself?" Mike asked, disbelieving.

Dragunov matched Mike's skepticism with his own. "Yeah," he said into the static crackle of the recording. "He did."

 

Dragunov watched Erwin now, waited. Erwin spoke first. 

"Who is he to you?"

Dragunov stilled, and watching this, Erwin waited for the lie, the hedge, the bluff.  But it was none of those things. Like everything he'd said, it sounded unbelievable, and it sounded an awful lot like the truth.

"I don't know," Dragunov said.

"You don't know?"

"I was supposed to kill him. And then I didn't."

"He trapped you."

"Don't make me a victim. I had him."

"But you didn't kill him."

"No."

"Why not?"

"He convinced me not to. So I didn't." Dragunov narrowed his eyes. "Sound familiar?"

It did. It sounded like rain and felt like a blade at his neck and smelled like mud soaking into his knees. It sounded awfully familiar.

"Since we're apparently on a tight schedule," Erwin said, "would you mind explaining how Kronos intends to cross over? It can't be the usual way. I'm not connected to your universe."

Dragunov grinned suddenly. He looked down and shook his head.

"Enjoying yourself?" Erwin asked.

Dragunov's smile fell immediately and he looked up. "No, actually. Since we're committed to being honest and all. Don't worry, I'll tell you. It's just funny. 'Your universe'. I belong  _here_ , technically. Isn't that a riot? I belong, and you don't."

"And you seem more than a little forgiving of the creature who made it that way."

 

Dragunov had confirmed it in his conversation with Mike. Everything Erwin had shared with Levi, and everything Levi shared likewise, was corroborated. Erwin was switched when his father was taken. Dragunov confirmed it. But even when they succeeded, Erwin wasn't dreaming. They waited months. They waited years. He wasn't dreaming. They had to try something else.

So they switched Levi, too, because Kronos knew from his surveying that the proximity of a mismatched pair would properly disturb the transuniversal membrane enough to catalyze their dreams. 

And for years, Kronos' surrogates attempted to broker a meeting between the two. Erwin's blood ran cold at the thought of their first meeting being orchestrated by Kronos, but Dragunov had admitted otherwise. For all their attempts, for all their meddling, they had nothing to do with their actual meeting. The next time they thought to check up on the two, Dragunov had said with a wry grin, they were already buying house plants and rearranging the kitchen. They assumed their work was done. All that remained to do was to wait for the dreams to come. To introduce them to brave new worlds. 

They never imagined Mike and Hange would dream, too. They haven't figured out that yet, Dragunov admitted. 

As for the Halcion compound that refused to do its work, Dragunov admitted that Kronos had never switched a person for as long as he'd switched Levi and Erwin. There were no rules, no precedents - but one. They would never be able to switch linearly again. Han and Hange's theory was confirmed.

"Linearly," Mike had repeated. "Doesn't sound like a definite no. Sounds a lot like your boss is the only one who knows how to switch him back," he said, and Dragunov's silence had been answer enough.

 

"Creature," Dragunov repeated under his breath, then said to Erwin, "You of all people should understand sacrifice."

"I understand choosing to make sacrifices."

"What good is choice when you don't even know your options? When you play lesser of two evils for so long you forget there was ever a good?"

"And you think Kronos is the good."

"I don't need to think. I don't need to imagine what it looks like. I've seen it. Limbs growing back. No bread lines. No one's huffing paint to forget their empty stomachs anymore. No one's drinking to forget they're miserable anymore. He's distributing it on his side now. Only reason it isn't everywhere is we don't have the resources to increase production, but even that's coming."

"I assume this universe being a Core has nothing to do with his ambitions."

"It has everything to do with it. The chance to help that many worlds at once? Forget once in a lifetime, more like once in a hundred billion of 'em."

Erwin watched him. He'd watched him as he answered every question, illuminated every thought. He knew what it looked like when Levi lied. He searched for it. He wanted to see it. Wanted to find it. He couldn't. Erwin considered him. "You actually believe this. He's made you his thrall."

"I'm no one's puppet. Everything I said, I believe."

"I believe that," Erwin said. "And only that."

Dragunov swallowed thickly. "You wanted to know how Mr. Smith planned to switch into-"

"I don't care anymore. It'll never happen."

"Only he knows how to synthesize the-"

"You said yourself that within several months of infection, they'll be lost. All that's left to do is to eliminate the infected, and that's what we're doing, thanks in no small part to The Threader you provided," Erwin said. "As soon as every last one is gone from this earth and as long as no more are affected, you can be on your way and we need not ever speak again."

Dragunov blinked. "What?"

Erwin rose. 

Dragunov stared after him as he approached the door. "You think that's enough?" he called after him. "You think if you just kill every last titan, this place'll be paradise?"

He rose as Erwin opened the door. The chain attached to his cuffs rattled and held taut. "Titans haven't existed on this end for more than fifty years. Did titans start the crusades? Do titans drop bombs? You and him, you're more alike than you think. You give people too much fucking credit-" 

Erwin shut the door.

Mike waited with Hange in the observation room. Erwin's eyes fell on Hange, who froze. The recording was playing on the monitor, just past the point at which Dragunov suggested that the two hundred and fifty year old Han had Titania. Had it all along. 

Han had known. He'd said nothing to them. Not a word. And Hange-

"Did you know?" Erwin asked. 

*

Levi threw his third meal against the wall. They'd wizened up and moved him into a room with a heavier door. It'll take a while to break this one down, too.

"Please eat," an agent called from the other side after shutting the food latch hastily. 

"Fuck you," Levi spat.

He grabbed a shard and pressed it hard into his palm. Not enough to break skin. Not after last time.

The sensors enraged him. They caught everything. He'd tried to cut himself open - just enough to give them a scare - but whatever they pumped into the room had him on the floor in seconds. So he tried again. Then a third time, and a fourth. Each time, he came to on a too-soft bed in a cell pretending to be a guest room and bandaged stitches across his skin. 

He'd come out of the Pond and the man pretending to be Erwin or the Erwin pretending to be a man or whoever or whatever stood in front of him had peddled his lies, smiled with all his perfect white teeth and said he'll tell him everything he wanted to know. Every last detail. He'll tell him how he and his Erwin and all the Survey Corps have been fighting a losing war, a war that did not begin nor end with titans, and one that had little to do with them at all.

And he'd said that peace, that salvation, was theirs should Levi choose to try to understand, should Levi choose to take it, right before Levi lunged and saw the guards too late and blacked out before he'd hit the ground.

He spoke like Erwin. He sounded like Erwin. He looked like Erwin. He smiled like Erwin. He was Erwin. He wasn't Erwin.

*

Hange hadn't known. Not that this absolved Han, but Hange, at least, wasn't pulling one over them. Mike's relief was palpable, and Erwin was sure his own was obvious enough. This wasn't the best time to hemorrhage allies.

Hange hadn't found anything in all their years that suggested the presence of a foreign substance affecting their body or that of those around them. But even that proved nothing. They had run biological scan and reviewed medical texts and records of the ship's crew, but without knowing what to look for, they could have easily missed it entirely, especially if this Titania bonded in such a way to the human body that it became indistinguishable from it. Hange admitted to have chalked up their lifespans and other physiological advancements to the natural progression of technology and time, but even that assumption had holes.

Even after the deluge of intel Dragunov granted them, they still knew so little. Every answer demanded a hundred questions. 

Hange stayed behind to review the recording again, to take notes. Mike walked Erwin outside. 

"Lot to take in," Mike said as they lingered on the steps of the facility. The setting sun scorched the avenue before them. 

Erwin felt something damp crawl down his neck. His hand flew to his jaw, right beneath his ear. 

Mike watched him. "What's up?"

Erwin looked at his hand. The sun colored it scarlet. "I'm bleeding."

Mike's eyes shot to his hand. He frowned, hard. "Erwin-"

"I'll just get a-" Erwin reached for a handkerchief with his other hand, but when he raised it to wipe his hand, it was gone. The blood was gone.

"It-" Erwin laughed softly. He touched his neck again. "I could've sworn..."

"Okay," Mike declared and draped his arm around Erwin to walk him back to the safe house. "I know it sounded like I was kidding when I said I'd tuck you in, but-"

Mike went on, but when Erwin realized he'd touched the very spot where Levi's blade once lingered, he couldn't quite hear anything else.

 

Erwin returned to see Dragunov the next day. His shirt was new, and his slacks, both provided by the facility. Nothing of Levi's on him any longer. One end of his collar was wrinkled, as if it had been worried and twisted recently. Erwin was caught between wanting to smooth it out and wanting never to see it or him again.

Erwin kept his eyes on him if only because it took a fraction of a second to remember that it wasn't Levi every time he looked away and back again. To remember all over again.

"Isabel was also taken in for questioning," Erwin said.

"Bet her room was nicer," Dragunov said neutrally.

"I want to confirm-"

"'Course you do," Dragunov interrupted, like he had seen this coming from the second they'd met. And maybe he had. "Confirm away."

"Isabel. In your - in Kronos' - universe, she's-"

"Dead."

"Farlan-"

"Dead. Hange, dead. Mike, dead. First two, car wreck. Last two, lab incident." He looked up. "Anything else?"

The shadows beneath his eyes were suddenly more pronounced. His jaw worked. He'd aged ten years in twenty seconds. Erwin stood. "No."

He stopped at the door. He made himself say it.

"I have," Erwin said quietly, "a single ounce of goodwill left in me and I'll use it now. If you would like to see anyone, I can have it arranged."

Dragunov said nothing.

"Afterward, we're consigning you to a permanent cell."

"And...?"

"And there you'll remain."

He turned. "That's it? Everything I said, you'd just-" He stopped. With mock concern, he said, "Without trial?” 

Erwin turned, because he would rather the man see his eyes when he said, "About as much trial as you offered Levi and myself and every instance of our families before you and your employer decided to play God."

Erwin didn't look back at him when he left the room. He didn't intend to ever look at him again. 

Erwin drew up plans over the next days, strategies for staging raids on suspected locations of Egret and her agents. He studied the military bases Mike had found. Thoroughly.

Mike dragged him out for coffee occasionally. Everyone else tip toed around him. 

Mike used their breaks to talk to him about his dreams, about his switch. About dust storms and a native town and a boy who talked his ear off about a key he'd found in the valley sands.

One morning, he pulled Erwin aside and admitted that if Erwin were anyone else, he'd tell him to keep his chin up. To pick up and keep moving. 

But he wanted Erwin to spill. To talk. Erwin managed to steer the conversation back to Mike's dreams a few times before he caught on to his ploy.

"Talk to- to someone, Erwin. Me, a doc, a passing cloud, whatever. Please."

Erwin glanced at himself a second longer in the bathroom mirror on another morning. He didn't remember that line in his forehead, those shadows beneath his eyes. He turned to ask Levi if he was imagining them before he remembered.

"Every day. Every mundane thing. Every little disappointment," Erwin said to Mike one afternoon at the corner cafe, a week since Dragunov was consigned to a permanent cell, since it was decided that every word he said was as absurd as it was fantastical, since it was decided that Levi was lost to them for good.

"Every hiccup, every...he didn't have to," Erwin said. "He never had to. I never...I never wanted more than he was willing to give. Even if that meant him leaving Survey. He wasn't responsible for me, for my recovery. I never...I never made him do those things. Did I?"

"What are you thinking?" Mike asked. He drew in his chair to accommodate a passing waiter.

"He was so sure," Erwin said of Dragunov. "He believed everything he said to us. He said he's seen it himself."

Mike didn't look surprised. "Don't tell Hange I told you. But they're looking into it. Studying other organisms, chemical processes and whatever else to see if something like Titania is even possible."

Erwin looked up. "And?"

Mike took a long drink. He set his cup down and rubbed his nose. "They're not ruling it out."

"How old is he, do you think? Kronos?"

"Dunno. Can't even think of a benchmark."

"And why only me? Of anyone who's ever lived. Anyone in any time in the history of the universe-"

"Don't get too-"

"What if he is me, Mike? What if there is no contagion, no faceless evil, what if we've been thinking about it all wrong-"

"Stop." Mike reached across and lay a hand on his shoulder. "Let's say for a hot second, he is. Okay? He's you. What do you think it does to a person to hop from universe to universe, to see versions of themselves for however long he's been up to this - what does it do to...to mess up royally in one place and know for a fact you have an infinite number of do-overs?"

"You lose perspective."

"Right," Mike said, drawing away. "Han had a little of this too, the way they talked about us. Seen so many of us, so many possibilities, so many realities that they lose that...they start to lose sense of how important each one of them are. Each one of us. On their own, and for no other reason than we're unique, even if the only difference between universe A and B is I ordered a latte instead of a black."

Erwin smiled. Mike didn't buy it. "Erwin, you aren't him," he said. "And he sure as hell isn't you. You understand what it's like on the ground. People aren't numbers to you like they are for him."

Erwin didn't tell Mike about the numbness. Coming out of reintegration, and then deprogramming, something, some sliver of empathy had been lost to him, and he knew it. He felt its absence. He didn't feel his heart split open when he looked at wounded Survey veterans anymore, when he peered through personnel records and crumpled condolence letters. The ache was barely there, like the faint, stuttering heartbeat of a dying thing. 

He didn't tell Mike that sometimes he wondered if this, this surge of hurt for his fellow man, was what defined humanity, his humanity. He didn't tell him that he wondered whether Kronos still felt it, whether Kronos was more human than he. 

"Then if everything Dragunov said was true," he said instead, "only one of us is doing something about it. About all the...all the hurt, all the suffering."

"Kronos' idea of "doing something about it" means using millions of worlds - hell, I don't even know how many - as his personal playgrounds. Guy like that, I wonder why he even cares about something like hunger or inequality. After seeing so much, you'd think it'd be a pretty pedestrian concern for someone like him."

"Someone like him," Erwin repeated. "Like he's so far removed from us that he's hardly human anymore. Doesn't that deify him?"

Mike leaned back and sighed. "Maybe. Maybe it shouldn't. I don't know. But it changes you, all that hopping, that I know. All those do-overs. Hell, it changes me just thinking about it. I'm not the same person I was before I knew any of this. The dreams, the multiverse. I don't think any of us are."

They grew quiet, retreating into their own thoughts. Erwin laughed under his breath.

Mike raised a brow. "What's up?"

Erwin's hand twitched from the sense memory of lacing his fingers with Levi's. "I never even thanked him."

 

He didn't want to set up a polygraph. He knew. In his gut, Erwin knew Dragunov was telling the truth. What he knew to be the truth, anyway. 

But something else interested him. Dragunov hated the name Kronos, hated that any of of them assumed that Kronos in any way desired titans as they were, instead of the superhumans he meant them to be.

And that same fervor betrayed him. Levi spoke of his most beloved passions with a face straighter than a steel rail, and a voice brimming with little but engineered disinterest. It was when Levi's voice rose that he was most uncertain, most afraid. 

And Dragunov was all claw and all bark when it came to defending Kronos. In anyone else, it was understandable, expected. In Dragunov - in an instance of Levi - it was a tell. He was uncertain. He was trying to convince not only them, but himself. 

Erwin wasn't prepared to be endeared to Dragunov, but he did realize that this could be a fissure they could exploit to encourage him to spill what Kronos was really up to, or to mine his mind for details he may have not thought important, details that might give them an opening to rid them of Kronos for good.

Because thus far, nothing went like they'd expected. Dragunov went not just quietly but willingly. He raised a hand against no one. Yelled at no one. Not one word of complaint. He cooperated at every step, spoke when spoken to, was extraordinarily polite with the barest edge to every word and no more. 

Because this was just another mission. Because he was meant to be be found. 

But beyond that, Erwin didn't know what more to expect. Dragunov was captured. He couldn't be rooting around for classified data. He had no opportunity to spy on them, no opportunity to report back. Everything from his hormone levels to heart rate were monitored should he somehow switch without a machine - a Pond - despite all of Hange's assurances that it was impossible. He was under lock and key. And if the intent was to kill Erwin or anyone near him, he'd had plenty of opportunity on the ride back to New York.

But it wasn't. Erwin was meant to live. He was always meant to live. That was why Beckert and Foley were installed into the Survey Corps. Erwin wondered how many times he might have died without them, how many shots and swings of a titan's mottled arm were meant for him. How often he'd cheated death without ever knowing.

Then it struck him how differently he thought of Foley now. He didn't presume to know why he had wanted to abandon his mission the way he did, but now, Erwin understood. Erwin sympathized. 

In his place, Erwin might have done the same. 

If Foley had killed him, none of this would have happened. If Foley had shot him down, Kronos would no longer be a danger to this universe. And if Kronos was out of the picture, Levi would never have been switched. Levi would have stopped dreaming. 

If Erwin had died, Levi would have lived. 

Erwin didn't share those kind of thoughts with Mike. Still, Mike took him out even more often, he and Hange, because maybe Erwin gave them too little credit. Maybe they knew exactly where his thoughts were, whether or not he voiced them. 

"Did Levi ever mention if there were titans over there?" Mike asked. "Where he dreamed?"

Hange took a too-large bite of their sandwich as Erwin mined his memory. He couldn't recall him mentioning titans in that world, though it didn't mean they didn't exist. Levi had always talked about a city - always a single city. A single tower. Frustrating or no, it made sense. An assassin on an assignment would care little for anything but their mark. 

A flare of anger shot through him. Had Dragunov killed Kronos, all this would have ended. 

But he wasn't being fair, he knew. Kronos was cunning. He hadn't just fooled Dragunov. He had them all. 

It hadn't entirely sunk in before, but it started to now. They had been unknowingly working with Kronos this entire time. Since the beginning, he sent his guardian angel Egret to push them here and there, lending a helping hand just when they needed it. Pointed them exactly where he wanted them.

Because he needed Erwin alive. And he needed Intermipol defeated, needed Erwin to clean up before Kronos settled in. 

This universe, and everything and everyone that Erwin had ever known, was nothing more than an incubator to him. Erwin didn't even belong to it, yet he was sent here to play groundskeeper, to keep everything neat and perfect for Kronos' arrival. 

Erwin didn't ask Hange how the work with the cryochamber was going. It wouldn't be enough. 

There could be no more half-measures. 

 

Just over a week since Dragunov's capture, radical incursions rose dramatically. 

Mike and Erwin oversaw agents as they manned their stations at New York's Survey security hub and tracked radical movements that had been erratic and unpredictable ever since the film dropped. Johannesburg's Chief Kotze was promoted to Regional division leader of Southern Africa and overseer of the pro-titan radical suppression wing of the Survey Corps. She updated them and Nanaba, who had flown back to their Johannesburg headquarters to more efficiently process the influx. 

Patterns began to emerge. For the first time, large radical groups several hundred strong began to congregate and focus their fire on specific locations. Kotze reported that the overwhelming majority of the incursions were concentrated in the continental United States. In the South and Southwest.

Erwin watched Mike study the overhead monitors as the first wave of aerial footage poured in. Every agent stilled momentarily as the drone cleared a plume of smoke, as the footage bathed the room in red. The scene was apocalyptic. A massive military compound crumbled. Flames belched and roared and poisoned the sky. 

More footage rolled in. Several spun wildly before disconnecting as the drones were shot out of the air.  

Mike coordinated a concentrated deployment of Survey ground and air troops to the areas most afflicted as Nifa wrangled the press and Nanaba connected with the White House. 

Mike turned around.

"Erwin...these locations...these bases-" He stopped when he saw Erwin's face. "You don't look surprised. Why don't you look surpri-"

"Sir," an agent called, "Reno division requesting air support."

"Granted," Mike called back, then turned to Erwin again and took a cautious step forward. "Erwin," he said lowly. "They're attacking the bases I marked."

"They are," Erwin said. "I made sure of it."

Agents rushed past them. Casualty numbers came in. Plumes of fire and smoke rose and rose, iron beacons breaching iron skies.

Mike recoiled slowly, as if underwater, as if disbelieving his lying ears, his lying eyes. "Erwin," he said, naked horror creeping into his words. "What have you done?"

"Kronos knocked. I answered."

"What? What are you- Erwin…you leaked it to- to fucking  _radicals_ , fuck," Mike said, beside himself. "What if I was wrong?" He almost shouted. "What if what I sensed wasn't-"

"You weren't."

"This," he said, pointing behind him and drawing the attention of agents nearby, "This is what we  _fight_. This is why we overthrew Intermipol. How can you not see that?"

"I see just fine."

Mike deflated. "This isn't a joke, is it? You're serious. You're actually serious. You wouldn't pull this kinda shit at a time like this. I can't let you go for this, Erwin."

"Then don't," Erwin said. "Lock me aw-" He couldn't finish. His jaw slackened. He forgot to draw breath. Mike followed his eye and turned.

"Height!" An agent demanded as they blew up the footage on every monitor.

"Forty meters!" Another shouted.

"Fifty!" called a third.

" _Exact_ height!" the first agent shouted, voice cracking with fright.

"It's still rising out of the compound basement," Erwin announced, taking over as Mike had gone slack with shock. "Wait for it to climb out and approximate its height based on the dimensions of the compound structure beside it. Reroute drones GH7 through GH10 to this location for better visual. Deploy all active squads from the San Diego, Los Angeles and Phoenix divisions to this location. Jackson?"

"Here, sir!" an agent responded.

"Advise the commander to inform the president that all United States military personnel are to avoid all confrontation."

"Yes sir."

"Sir," another agent called. "We're getting similar reports from Tucson to Atlanta. One in each base. Five sightings- now six- seven-"

"I want every division this side of the Atlantic on standby no less than two hundred miles from the nearest affected compound," Mike announced, coming into himself. "Five divisions to a base, no less."

Several agents turned. 

"That leaves us vulnerable-" one started.

"What if there's an attack in the north, or further south?" asked another.

"There won't be," Mike said under his breath. To the agents, he said, "Do it."

The agents turned and relayed the orders.

More sightings appeared on the screen. Ten and counting. The smallest beat record heights by twenty meters. Record height used to be thirteen. Average height used to be seven.

Erwin watched the creatures clamber out of the compounds' blown open basements, courtesy of the enraptured radicals, themselves being felled by everything from returning fire to the collapsing foundations around them to the swinging limbs of the titan itself. 

He'd wanted to be wrong. He'd wanted to believe that Dragunov was right. Wanted to be sure that Kronos was here for no other purpose than to do exactly as Dragunov promised. Erwin hoped to eliminate the last lingering suggestion that there might be something Dragunov wasn't telling them. 

None of Erwin's hoping would change this. There wasn't enough optimism in a hundred thousand worlds to understand this as anything but what it looked like. Agents that Mike had picked out to be recently switched, like Foley and Beckert, had either infiltrated or partnered with the United States' Department of Defense to grow giants of a scale the earth had never seen. Of a scale Erwin hadn't even seen in the walled world. 

"How did you know?" Mike asked, his voice splintering. "How the fuck did you know?" 

Erwin looked away as a fifty-meter slammed a jet out of the sky. 

"I didn't."

*

"He hated pointless violence."

Levi turned sharply. There, in the far corner of the room, flickered a hologram of Erw- of Kronos. He approached it, sneering.

"Why the tricks?" Levi said, waving a hand impudently through the holo and warping his face. "Come here in person. I'd love to chat," he said, waving through it most violently on the last word.

"I will. I promise," Kronos said. Over Levi's scoff, he went on, "I'm needed here at the moment. It's extraordinarily difficult to coordinate a response to an assault from another universe. Communication can only pass through personnel. Our aggressors have the advantage."

"What assault?"

"He hated it. My Levi, the Levi you call Dragunov. He hated pointless violence."

"Give him a medal. So what?"

"But apparently not Erwin. Not yours."

"What the fuck are you talking abo-"

A monitor set deep within a wall flickered on. He heard the screaming first. The footage panned through one room in the tower, then another, then the next. Agents buckled, fell to the ground shivering, retching, sobbing, screaming.

"Wh-what's-"

"They feel it, you know," Kronos said. "When their counterpart dies. I understand the pain is beyond words."

Levi shuddered at the animal screams. The security footage kept cycling. Agents continued falling. Some tore out their hair. Some became violent. Chairs were thrown. A windowless lab was mid-destruction, the culprits sobbing, drenched and freezing as the fires activated the sprinkler system. This was an act. This had to be an act. This couldn't be an act.

"Clever of him," Kronos said as Levi's heart thundered in his ears. "leading radicals to our door. He learned a lot from Intermipol."

Already unsettled, Levi bristled, "Don't fuck with me-"

"I hate it, too. Pointless death. I don't intend to toy with you, Levi, or to lie to you or waste either of our time with anything but the honest truth, anything but my sincere desire to work together toward a common good."

"Then why-"

"Which is why I'm disappointed that my counterpart ignored our olive branch and instead used terrorists to destroy our property and endanger military and civilians alike on a hunch. A deeply misinformed hunch."

*

"Where are you going?" Mike called after Erwin. He tailed him out of the hub and through a bustling hallway.

"We need eyes in the air," Erwin said. 

"What you need is a tribunal-"

"You know we don't have enough helidisk captains for twelve simultaneous assignments of this scale."

"You're not even cleared for flight-"

"As of last Monday, I am."

"Your arm-"

"There are accommodations."

"You're gonna get yourself killed."

"So be it." 

Mike grabbed his arm and pulled him to a stop. "So that's it, isn't it? This is some viking send off, right? Can't get to Valhalla if you don't die in ba-"

Erwin grabbed his shoulder and moved him aside for a group of agents to pass. "Mike." He clutched his collar too-tightly. "There won't be a tribunal. God know it's what I deserve, but there just isn't time. I've seen titans of this height outside the walls, I know how they move, how they act. Not putting me out there's not just an abdication of duty, it's irresponsible."

"You could advise from here. You don't need to be up there in person-"

"Don't make me spell it out. If the titans fall and I don't come back, it'll be more of a victory than if I do. Or are you forgetting that the only thing Kronos needs from me is a heartbeat?"

"None of us feel that way-"

"You should. I do-"

"And it's wrong."

"You don't feel that way because you're blind, Mike. You have a massive blind spot in the shape of your best friend and don't pretend you don't, just," Erwin's voice began to splinter. "don't make this any-"

Mike embraced him. 

Erwin blinked rapidly, hid his eyes against his shoulder. "You know I'm right-"

"I know you're an impossible son of a bitch. There's gotta be a better way-"

"There's no time to find it." Erwin pulled back. "The last time we waited, he took one of our own. Look at me, Mike. Would you stand here and tell me to wait again if he took Nanaba next?"

Mike struggled. He blew out a breath. "Fuck."

"Chief!" an agent called from the hub, their head poking out. "Reno, sixty meters! Thirteen total, now."

"Where's the Sacramento division?" Mike called.

"En route to Phoenix-"

"Reroute, send 'em to Reno," Mike said. He turned back. "Erwin-"

But Erwin had gone.

*

"You can't lie for shit," Levi said. "Erwin would never work with radicals. We busted Intermipol for doing the same thing."

"Exactly. I can't imagine your disappointment."

The holo flickered shut. The monitor stayed on.

Erwin would never use radicals. This was an act. 

The rooms kept cycling. An agent threw themselves at a window. Cut. One agent knocked out another. Cut. A security guard raised a gun to her own head. Cut. 

It was an act. He was lying. 

It was several hours before the cycle repeated. It was an act. It had to be an act. An empty room. A broken window. Cut. A pair of limp bodies. Cut. A pool of blood. Cut. He was lying. He had to be lying. 

*

The chopper shuddered as Erwin checked his harness. It was only a precaution - he would direct them from the cabin. Another agent had helped him slip it on, a modified one that accommodated Erwin's unmoving arm. 

Levi had secured one on him once. Erwin had wanted to learn how to fly after their first successful test flight in a Johannesburg incursion during the global survey. 

Levi's hands had been sharper, faster, less forgiving. Either Erwin learned how to strap himself in quickly, or not at all. Levi coddled no one. He coddled Erwin least of all. He refused Erwin's request to learn the less demanding technique, of dangling beneath the disc and, in Levi's words, "Letting the thing do all the shitting work", instead all but forcing him to climb atop it and ride it as one would a snowboard.

His first flight went spectacularly awry in every possible way. First, the engine malfunctioned. Then the straps twisted. Then the coolant began to leak. Then his balance was thrown by a stiff wind. He'd never earned so many bruises so quickly.

Levi had brushed him off, fixed the radiator, and shoved him back on.

Erwin persisted and Levi watched for a few uninterrupted nights before they were needed at the next division, though they spoke of little more than technique. Whatever wariness that lingered between them faded. Looking back, the lesson was never about the lesson alone. Levi had been learning him, understanding him, just as Erwin had in return.

And after those few scant days, Levi had become a more persistent shadow, a more solid presence at his side. He'd begun to snap at him more, too, complained brazenly about the wrinkles in his collar or the near imperceptible dust clinging to the back of his heel. It was worrying. Then it was curious. Then it was craved.

Towers of smoke roiled into the sky. The chopper shuddered still more violently. They approached a compound less than fifty miles off Phoenix. Erwin rattled off orders. Five fliers leaped out of the chopper. He saw it through the cabin's open door. Seventy meters. The largest of the thirteen. 

The Threader wasn't designed for titans of this size. They needed to engage the old fashioned way.

The chopper drew closer. The titan depressed the earth it stood on. It swayed, as if unsure of how to move. The fliers moved in. Its head lolled this way and that. Then it stopped, its attention drawn to something behind the chopper as its arms swayed in almost exaggerated lethargy. 

One flier made contact with the titan's nape.

"Report," Erwin ordered when she didn't resurface.

"Damn hot, Mr. Smith," another flier reported, breathing heavily. "Melted the disc. Carol's gone."

The titan took its first lumbering step forward. It hunched its shoulders.

"Belrose," Erwin started slowly, watching the titan bend its knees and feeling the hair at his own nape stand on end, "What are the chances we're looking at an abnormal?"

"Hard to tell, sir," the flier reported. "Why do you figure it's-" 

"Because this one's a hell of an actor," Erwin said, then to the pilot, "Pull up. Pull up now-"

But between his first words and his last, the titan had taken off like an Olympic runner and grown from the size of Erwin's fist to blocking out the sun with its outstretched hand. Its fingers closed on them. 

The pilot abandoned his post to find the fuse to the explosives that lined the helicopter as the copilot threw open the cabin door. The chopper blades screeched uselessly against the titan's knuckles. The copilot crawled beneath the chopper as the titan upended it. She unhooked the last remaining disc and secured it to Erwin's harness.

"Wait," Erwin said. "You can still-"

The copilot slammed a closed fist over her heart before throwing him out. 

The air whistled violently around him. The titan drew the chopper into its mouth. 

The explosion deafened him. The shockwave tore through him as easily as if he were a leaf. The titan's head split, its skull shattered. Great chunks radiated into the iron sky, raining down the lingering filaments of the most gristly fireworks on earth.

Erwin drew his knees into his chest, maneuvered the wobbling disc beneath his feet, and recovered from the descent with a wide arc that nearly grazed the ground before he rose again, stomach lurching and eyes stinging before he could free a hand to slip on a windbreaking mask.

"The blades," he said to the remaining fliers, having just arrived to the scene, no match for the titan's explosive run. "Use the chopper's blades to sever the nape."

*

Levi wore holes in the floor with his pacing. It was a bald lie. Erwin couldn't have given any orders anyway. He wasn't ready to command, wasn't fit to be anywhere but a bed or a courtyard bench. They wouldn't have given him command. He was still recovering. They pushed him too far. 

No, Levi realized. No one pushed him. No one pushed Erwin like he pushed himself.

Surely, someone would have pulled him back. Someone would have stopped him.

*

"Erwin, come in," Nanaba said, her voice crackling in his ear as Erwin's team finally severed the titan's nape.

"The seventy is down," Erwin reported. "We're waiting on a second chopper to take us to the next-"

"Get out of there, now," she snapped. "All of you."

Erwin frowned. He tore his eyes from the falling titan to the compound. There were no vehicles approaching it to douse fires or look for survivors. They were all leaving. They were evacuating.

"Nan, what's-"

"Oh, commander," another voice chimed in, "do let me."

"Pixis?"

"I'll be properly embarrassed later, Smith, but I'm afraid in our emergency departmental review following this apparent infiltration-"

So they hadn't been working together, Erwin realized. Though he wondered if it was better or worse that the DOD was more incompetent than it was malicious.

"-we've discovered that a curious number of 10 kilos are unaccounted for. Thirteen, in fact." 

"Ten kilos," Erwin repeated with his heart in his throat. "You don't mean-"

"I'm afraid so. Whoever these...these neoradicals are - I can't imagine the ordinary sort are capable of this degree of sabotage - they were prepared. Get out of there."

Thirteen bases. Thirteen ten-kiloton bombs.

"All that evidence-"

"Will be eviscerated," Nanaba snapped, "Along with you if you don't move. Get out."

"I'll assist evacuees," Erwin said.

"Erwi-!" He shut off the line.

He explained the situation to his team and offered them a choice. Leave, or assist. All four remained.

They picked off obstructing radicals from the air and cleared debris for trucks to pass. Reports came in of unidentified jets approaching the airspace around one base, then two, then three.

Oh, how disappointed he would be, Dragunov, to know what his beloved Kronos thought of his hatred for pointless violence now. 

The first bomb dropped on a compound off Atlanta. 

The very air stilled in mourning. 

"We could follow it-" one of his fliers started.

"Jet's a little faster than a disc, moron," another said.

"Focus on your task," Erwin said. "Any one of you can leave at any moment." 

No one left.

No one was ready for the blinding white.

*

Levi couldn't take it anymore. He had to do something. Anything. Locked in here like some damsel, he was useless.

He'd have to pretend to be interested in what Kronos had to say. He'd have to be diplomatic and gather as much intel as he could for everyone on the other side for when they were ready to switch him back or if he dreams again - it didn't help that he still had no idea how any of this worked.

He could do this. He could do this for Erwin. Erwin would have already done something. He would have known what to do immediately. 

Levi had wasted so much time. He could have known what was happening right then, right beside Kronos since he seemed so committed to putting him there. He had to do it for Erwin.

Erwin would have thought faster. Erwin would have done more. 

*

Every muscle screamed. Every movement was met with piercing pain. He couldn't open his eyes. Erwin heard chopper blades. He felt the mud sinking into his knees. He smelled the rain.

Levi would have been faster. Levi would have saved more. 

*

In the morning, a folder waited for Levi on the writing desk. Thirteen dossiers waited inside, a portrait clipped to each one. Emilia Orvud. Franklin Trost. It went on. All were signed, all dated. The newest was forty years old, and the oldest, sixty. 

As he peered through them, he realized he'd been mistaken. They weren't just dossiers. They were consent forms. 

Beneath them all was one letter.

 

_Levi,_

 

_These are the faces of the first thirteen volunteers from your universe. Met with the opportunity to end human suffering at the cost of their own lives, they offered their hearts, their bodies, and their souls to the Titania project. These are the only titans I ever intended to introduce into your world. You will not be surprised, I think, to learn that agents of the International Military Police - not unlike the dear sisters that still throttle my own world - got a hold of the viral half of the formula against my will and introduced quite a few more._

_They perished last night. They will be mourned, but also celebrated. Because of their sacrifice, there is more than enough tissue extract waiting to be married to a binding agent to accommodate your world twice over._

_I'd like for us to meet and discuss Titania and the introduction of it to your world in its complete form. I'd love for you to meet those who would have long since perished without it - to hear their stories and their thoughts. And, more urgently, to discuss what it could do for your former commander in his present state._

 

_Erwin Smith_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! one week break to get the finale in order, then it's back to once a week for the final three.


	22. Someone New

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [Anomie Belle - How can I be sure](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLhykn_9DOY&ab_channel=CarlosPina)  
> 

 

Sun-stained-sky flipped and lurched by. Coy wires coiled and tightened and snapped for hunter-prey bird-bone soldiers. He watched it all while his own splintered bones sank into baking mud, while his lungs bubbled crimson, and if he could just turn his aching skull, he might even see what time thought of walls.

A shadow dropped down and shook his shoulders, and Erwin wondered if it meant to pull him to his feet. And the shadow tried so earnestly that Erwin didn't have the heart to tell it that his feet were three meters away, that his legs were ribbons.

Erwin's eyes opened to a flurry of beeping and to darting hands, to white ceilings and mint walls and chrome instruments.

The cardiac monitor settled as quickly as it had spiked and Erwin would have apologized to the green and blue scrubs whirling about him for the fright had he the energy for anything more than moving his leadened lungs. 

Levi visited him once, he was sure of it. He'd asked about Erwin's arm. He seemed to think it was gone, which Erwin quietly resented. Sure, he couldn't move it anymore, couldn't move it for a while, but it was right there. 

"It's here," Erwin said, or tried to say, "it's right here, Levi."

And Levi looked at him like he wasn't in his right mind and maybe he wasn't, and maybe he didn't care for that very much because Levi was there, too, right there, all of him, all of his rough hands and knitted brows and all the gear straps hanging off him, irreverently unbuckled and swinging as he leaned forward.

And Erwin was sure Levi had opened his mouth, had been about to speak, but no willpower of his could best the crest of the wave of nausea that struck him then and again and again and when Erwin finished tearing his throat to ribbons, Levi had gone.

He woke only to tear it still more, not even bothering, after a time, to even open his eyes.

So he didn't know who rubbed his back and smoothed his damp hair out of his face at first – at first – but they've all been in the dying business too long not to know what comforting hands felt like and to whom they belonged, too long not to know each palm by the hide of their scars and the scratch of callouses, more character and more history in each one than in the length of their noses or in the jut of their jaws.

That scar was when Mike was knocked off his bike in the Trinidad incursion. That callous had risen from years of favoring his right a tick too much when he aimed.  The hands were Mike's. His body denied Erwin the strength to open his eyes but he didn't need to, never needed to, to know.

He wasn't there when the inspiration at last visited Erwin to heave open his stone eyelids, and though wading through steel might have been easier than moving ever again, he did it anyway. 

On an impulse, he curled his right hand. It obeyed.

The blooming cloud was singed on his eyes. So deeply had it painted everything in sight for miles a rich, pregnant scarlet that it scorched from Erwin's mind the very thought of the world having ever been another color, and he wondered then as he did now and as he would until he couldn't string thoughts together anymore if there would have ever been a more beautiful way to die.

But he lived. He felt like death and knew he looked it too but he drew breath from screaming lungs and daggers pierced his wailing gut and that was more living than he ever counted on and still his heart was beating.

His heart was beating, and Mike was talking. He could have been talking for hours.

“-not too far away to-"

“Mike.”

Mike shook his head. “Don't. I know exactly what you'll - don't. If we hadn't pulled you out, if that reserve team wasn't as close as they were-”

“Mike-”

“What?” Mike's eyes hardened, ready for a fight.

Erwin's attempt at speech produced a tired little sound that frustrated himself and struck naked fear in Mike's face. He cleared his throat and held up a shaky hand before Mike could hair-trigger the nurse call button and tried again. Mike stared, frozen, expectant.

"Hey," Erwin said in a small sigh.

Mike stared. Erwin's face must have been scuffed up something awful by the stinging stretch he felt at smiling stupidly at Mike standing stupidly, but maybe it was worth it when Mike deflated a little, when Mike looked as if all the world's troubles had just given him a reprieve, a little. 

"Hey," Mike said back. 

Erwin didn't ask him if Levi had actually come by. He didn't want to be presumptuous. That was before he remembered that Levi wasn't in a position to just drop by.

He thought he'd rested more than enough before scheduling a call with Pixis, though by Mike's standards, no time was time enough. But when it wasn't Pixis but Nanaba who walked in, Erwin became inexplicably sympathetic to Mike's opinion. It might have had something to do with how she strode in like a lion after easy prey.

"Hundreds," she said without preamble. "Too early for hard numbers, but that's about how many you and your team evacuated from that base-"

"Nan-" Mike started, stopping only when Erwin closed his hand on Mike's wrist. 

"-and I'm telling you this because I want you to know I know that that's your one line of defense and I'm taking it from you. 'Cause you're not spinning this one, Erwin. If what Mike told me is true – right, Mike? I wasn't having a vivid hallucination? Not gonna start dreaming about being some world class ballerina?”

“No, ma'am,” Mike mumbled.

“No,” she repeated, and turned back to Erwin. “And damn, but you're a class A spook 'cause I can't find a suggestion of a shred of evidence that connects you to this and we'd all better hope it stays that way. You don't get to chat to Pixis, either, without my authority. Unless you'd like to prove me right a second time? Lead all of Survey behind my back from this bed?”

“No, ma'am,” Erwin said.

He didn't want his state to mollify her. The sound of him, cracked and small and barely-there, gave her pause and he saw it and hated it because if he deserved anything, the least of it was a well-earned chewing out. And that was truly the very least of what he deserved for what he'd done.

He'd hurt her personally. Promised he wouldn't step out of bounds before doing so with no hesitation, the choice riding on fears and anxieties and all things that didn't belong in the Survey Corps, never belonged. He had stepped down not a second too soon, and yet he still defiled the office.

But if he had to do it again, he would. He wanted to know if Kronos could be trusted. If Dragunov had truly told them all he knew. And now they knew.

“My trial,” Erwin said, every word passing through his mouth like a leaden weight. “When?”

Nanaba frowned, turned to Mike. Mike looked down.

“You didn't tell him,” she murmured. Mike gave her a beseeching look as she strode off and shut the door behind her.

Erwin expended his precious energy to frown, though Mike still looked down and hadn't appreciated the effort.

“Mike-”

“We found what you were researching. Before the incursion. Public records, nothing anyone would stop at if they didn’t know what they were looking for. But you were looking for something, Erwin.”

Erwin shut his eyes. He couldn't quite listen and watch at once without the nausea roiling in.

Mike lowered himself into a chair beside him. “Panacea. It had a hollow center. Kind of a weird architectural choice. So you found them. The firm that designed Panacea tower.”

Erwin frowned. His hair fell onto his face.

“It's long gone now, sold off and merged with three or four other firms years ago. But you knew that. You found that, too. And you must've thought it was weird how few assignments they took in the 80's and still managed to stay in business.”

Erwin groaned lowly. He'd ask Mike to get the point, but if he ever wanted to summon the willpower to eat again, he needed to conserve even that impulse.

So Mike told him that though that had been the end of his digital trail, they hadn't needed much more. That they studied the firm's employees, pulled travel records like they imagined Erwin had. Concluded like they imagined Erwin had that no one vacationed in D.C. that often.

He paused and Erwin imagined he was carding his hands through his hair or scratching his nose.

"You knew. You knew the firm that designed Panacea designed those basements that hid the titans."

Erwin said nothing.

“You weren't gonna tell us about that, were you? Didn't even try to defend yourself. Tried to make yourself out like some cartoon villain. Did you design all this thinking no matter how this turned out, you'd die? Either in combat or in a cell? Did you think,” Mike said, getting heated, “We'd just let you-

“Mike.” Erwin opened his eyes. He tried to control his words, stop them from slurring. “What did Nan mean?”

"Thought she was pretty straightforward. You went behind her back even when you said you-"

Erwin groaned. Mike didn't play oblivious very well. "Other thing. She left. When she left."

Mike made to stand. "Should probably get the doc-"

Erwin reached for him, but couldn't quite make the distance.

"Pixis- he's giving us the all clear to work with the DOD. Said he didn't want a repetition of Intermipol if he can help it-"

"Mike. How long?"

And if he wasn't sure Mike was avoiding something, he was sure now. He never could lie to Erwin.

"You were far from the blast," he started.

In flashes and fragments, Erwin recalled a little of what had followed the bomb's drop. Not events, not even his own actions. But he remembered what he felt. He remembered feeling and thinking and knowing that he had all his limbs and that he couldn't let himself leave knowing good and honest soldiers were trapped below.

And he'd felt like every atom of him burned. Erwin didn't remember the journey back. 

Mike curled his hands into white-knuckled fists. "But not far enough."

 

*

 

It was the assignment of a lifetime, pretending Levi wouldn't rather gut Kronos on sight than let the man escort him out of his cell-pretending-to-be-a-guest-room and act appropriately enthralled by whatever it is he thought he could possibly say that would convince Levi he meant no harm.

And Kronos looked as if he not only knew Levi's intent but capitalized on it, walking him through the tower halls without a guard and without weapons of his own. Levi wasn't ruling out a blade strapped close to his body, but even that didn't seem likely. Kronos was all presumption, all unapologetic self assurance.

 Kronos walked him through night-veiled halls and explained why he had imposed himself in their lives. He explained titan propagation and titan physiology and tissue preservation and human evolution. Levi held on to his mental rolodex of questions until they thinned nearly to nothing without him needing to voice a single one.

Questions about titans, about Titania, about Kronos' role in the first and the second, about Dragunov, about the switches, about the Pond, about revolution, about man playing God.

Kronos stopped, shrugged off his jacket and pulled up his shirtsleeve. 

The titanium stopped at his wrist.

That wasn't right. In all the times he'd seen it, it had reached well past the elbow, maybe even to his shoulder. And before he could reason that all those dreams must have been about another version of Kronos or of another time, Kronos confirmed his first thought.

It was growing back.

"We called it a cure amongst ourselves,” Kronos said, “but that's something of a misnomer. It's truly a stabilizing agent. The other half of the viral portion of Titania.”

Levi glanced again at Kronos' titanium arm, now hand.

The thirteen titans – the original thirteen – had all been volunteers. They had been told everything. They had agreed to everything.

They had been needed to act as a source from which titan tissue could be collected to synthesize the binding agent – the second cannot exist without years of cultivating the first.

No other participants had been slated for injection. And yet, there were a few more than thirteen titans on Levi's side. Even if Kronos' excuse for that one was not only palatable but even halfway true – that the viral agent had been stolen by idle hands and released by ignorant ones – decades of death was no small price.

The titanium gleamed. Not even for this.

“You're wondering,” Kronos said, watching him, “if it's worth it.”

“I'm wondering what must have forced your hand,” Levi deflected wryly, “to start drowning me in all your precious secrets.”

Kronos hummed. “Your Erwin also has good reason to act soon.”

Their steps echoed harshly. A distant window beyond the tower flickered once. Twice.

Levi unclenched his jaw. “Maybe if you or your spooks gave me an idea of what you mean by that, it might actually do something 'sides annoy me.”

Wounded in battle, they said. I meant everything from a paper cut to a beheading. It meant anything. It meant nothing.

“Allowing Titania to open humanity's inherent potential alleviates scores of mundane human afflictions. From hunger to the common cold. Illnesses vanish. Lifetimes double, triple.”

Levi shoved his hands in his pockets to stifle their tremor, though whether they were born from anxiety or fury or fear, he couldn't say.

“And it cures some that aren't so mundane but no less common. Dismemberment,” he said, raising his hand. “Heart disease,” he said, glancing at a passing agent.

“Cancer.”

*

 

“You stayed. For hours. Shepherded people out of there, probably thought you were safe 'cause you were away from the fireball.” Mike swallowed. “But that's not what's doing you in.”

Erwin remembered little, and what little he had was drenched an unforgiving red. He must have operated on instinct. Survey protocol. All he remembered was blinding white. And soon after, bleeding skies.

“How long?”

“There are steps. Hange knows some experimental- I mean, it's up to you, but. We should- I think-”

“How long?”

“Two months, if you're lucky. Two weeks, if you're not.”

 

*

 

The lab was underground and behind a security system the likes of which Levi could have never even imagined. It somehow even knew even that Levi had switched.

“The system is rigged to sense both traces of Halcion and a trace chemical in the fluid suspended in the Pond,” Kronos explained.

“And if the person switches any other way?”

But maybe there was no other way. No one else had been switched for as long as Levi had been, like Erwin. Switched by Kronos. Robbed by Kronos. Made into his playthings, to rip out of one dollhouse and shoved into another.

“There is no other way,” Kronos confirmed, and for a moment, Levi thought he would say it, thought it was time to talk not about universes or mortality or miracle serums but just this, just the two lives that Kronos gave himself the authority to shape and prod from behind a curtain for years.

But the doors opened, and the moment passed.

The stroll through the lab proper was mercifully short, as Levi couldn't tell one expensive looking glass thing from another, and Kronos' crash course in the biochemical nuances of the serum was entirely wasted on him.

But beyond the physical labs and storage facilities and synthesizing chambers was the clinic. According to Kronos, Titania differed minutely from one universe to the next. Not in any dramatic way, but, he said, eyes drifting as if he recalled from experience, one universe's version of it, for example, would be rejected more often from patients with one blood type but not another, or from patients with a predisposition for kidney disease. For this reason, running out into the streets and lobbing the serum at everyone in sight the moment it was conceived would have been irresponsible. Taking a little extra time to modify it until it could be administered to as many people as possible, Kronos said, was worth the wait.

Another reason why, it went unsaid, it should be developed in Core sooner rather than later.

There were dozens of patients. Upwards of fifty, at Levi's guess. Kronos introduced them to him by name, even spoke to more than a few as if returning to some engrossing prior conversation. The patients beamed at him, joked with him. Levi's carefully crafted image of Kronos as an aloof, top-down, holier-than-thou transuniversal dictator with good intentions crumbled by the second.

This didn't look like Kronos. It didn't sound like Kronos. It looked, sounded, and felt, like Erwin. Erwin would introduce patients like this. Erwin would put a reassuring hand on their hands or shoulders like this. Erwin would be like this.

It didn't help that Levi had forgotten, in his self-constructed vacuum, that only he knew this man as Kronos. That they would call him Erwin, because that's the man he was to them. Kronos wasn't just showing him his patients. He was showing Levi the man these people knew him to be. And that man looked, felt and sounded a lot like Erwin.

Levi excused himself and moved away on the pretext of meeting the other patients, though he sincerely couldn't stand the sight of anyone or anything anymore. It was too much.

Neither did anyone look like a patient. Some lounged in their beds while others curled into armchairs they had pulled out of who knows where. Personal affects were everywhere. Some, Kronos had explained, needed to remain overnight or for longer, while others left daily, or only needed to return once every few weeks or months for checkups. No one was detained. No one was forced.

And there was that other thing Levi couldn't quite ignore as he looked for an alcove or a restroom or anywhere where he could be with himself and process one one-hundredth of what he'd learned in the last hour alone – they knew him, Levi, too. They called him by name and lobbed as many jokes and smiles as they had to Kronos, and he weathered the jolt of guilt at not responding before he remembered that he didn't know any of these people. Dragunov did.

Dragunov had come down here. Often, if the expedited security check was anything to go by, and if the smiles and greetings could be understood in no other way.

He stepped outside the clinic at the opposite end, and mercifully, all who passed by were agents who responded as well to Levi's glares as he imagined they may have to Dragunov's.

Kronos. Dragunov. It was becoming more and more difficult to differentiate himself and Erwin from them in anything but name.

It was too good to be true. All this naked philanthropy. All these apparent misconceptions and miscommunications stripped away to expose not just good intention but competent execution, nuanced execution. No heroes. No villains. Just a man doing right by this world and every world the best way he knew how and a bought man rejecting coin for cause. It was too good to be true.

Han had wondered if the machines were the child of a single Prometheus, but maybe they had been looking in the wrong direction. Maybe Titania was humanity's second flame.

Kronos joined him eventually, as Levi knew he would.

“May I tell them?” Kronos asked, concern lining his brow.

Levi squinted. “Tell them what?”

“Who you are.”

Levi blinked, just barely stopped himself from gaping. “I was under the impression that kinda thing was confidential or something.”

Kronos shrugged. “We're not Luddites, not like the sisters. I make sure the concept of switching is normalized in the tower. In fact, some of our patients here are switched. Some with more uncomfortable transitions arrange it with their counterparts to ease the burden. As long as it's handled responsibly and the risks are understood by both parties, I don't see that it's the herald of the apocalypse that many make it out to be. Not that the sisters themselves believe their own propaganda. Despite having one of their own, they're invested in robbing me of mine.”

“But you do deny people from using it.”

“Within reason. A criminal and medical background check, no more.”

“You deny me.”

“You're an exception.”

“How many exceptions do you make?”

“Enough to ensure the safety of all parties involved.”

“And whose safety am I compromising?”

“Erwin's,” Kronos said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Levi scowled. “Say that again-”

“Do you want him to live?”

Levi stopped, stunned.

“I'm sorry,” Kronos said, “that was sudden.”

Levi scoffed to hide the jolt of deja vu. No one but Erwin was that adept at sticking his foot firmly in his mouth.

“I've just,” Kronos started a little clumsily, as if it was difficult for him to speak, “received an updated report.“

Levi heard words like  _radiation_  and  _poisoning_  and  _he stayed too long_  and  _probably_ _four weeks_  and they didn't register, they passed through one ear and Levi pushed them violently out the other. It was too predictable. The con was too neatly packaged. Erwin was fine.

“So you drop nukes,” Levi said, grinning humorlessly, “and then you're shocked – stunned – that it might have been...dangerous? Harmful? Am I getting that right?” Levi laughed, shaking his head in disbelief.

“The decision wasn't made lightly. Imagine for yourself if radicals had gotten access to those labs, to all that information. What perversion of Titania they would be able to generate.”

“They're too fucking stupid to-”

“I thought the same of Intermipol.”

Levi frowned. “What's this gotta do with Intermipol?”

“You've seen the dates on the consent forms.”

“Sure. Forty, fifty years ago.”

“About when titan sightings started.”

“Sure…”

“How old is the Survey Corps?”

“Forty, give or take? So wh-”

“The Survey Corps was created by the International Military Police as its external paramilitary arm to deal with titan sightings. Keep them quiet at a time when they could still be mistaken for humans. According to public record, it was created after titan sightings began.”

“You're not telling me shit I don't already know.

Kronos considered him for a moment before drawing a folded page out of his jacket pocket and offering it to Levi, who only stared at it, unimpressed.

“These are coordinates for a number of files on your side that you might be interested in. Files confirming the true date of the Survey Corps' conception.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Intermipol formed the Survey Corps months before the first recorded titan sighting.”

Levi took the page, unfolded it.

“Unfortunately, you'll need to memorize that information – the Pond doesn't accommodate luggage – but it should confirm this.”

Levi froze. It was starting to sink in. “Why would- did they release- on purpose-”

Kronos shrugged. “Call me an optimist, but I doubt they released the viral Titania themselves.”

“You think so highly of them,” Levi sneered. “So, what happened, then? Intermipol misplaced a vial or two? Someone take it home to show their ma and dropped it on the side of the road?”

“Don't tell me you're a stranger to corporate incompetence, Levi.”

“I'm a stranger to giving Intermipol the benefit of the doubt. That's assuming you're not fucking with me – big assumption, by the way.”

“We're in agreement more than you realize. I don't mean to absolve Intermipol by assuming it was incompetence rather than malice that started uncontrolled titan propagation on your side. No, I think incompetence is much more dangerous.”

“Says the guy who dropped thirteen fucking nukes.”

“A small price for the alternative.”

“Oh, yeah? How the hell could these dumbass radicals have made things any worse?”

“There are ways,” he said softly.

Levi stepped forward. “Well?” he pressed.

Kronos was a buffet of tells, then. Eyes darting. Brows pulled taut. Levi wondered how often he'd had this conversation. How many times he had to convince some other version of Levi to, in turn, convince Erwin to let Kronos switch. How perfected was this performance.

That was all Levi allowed himself to think and he thought it fiercely, because he otherwise found no artifice in it, nothing less than sincerity. Kronos was supposed to be something all-knowing and all-seeing and he was supposed to be numb to death and suffering and yet in every understanding of the word, Kronos looked pained.

“I witnessed radicals in other worlds synthesizing Titania to their ends,” Kronos said softly, so lowly that Levi moved closer still.

“In one, they engineered the virus to be airborne. In another, it passed through exposure to titan blood. In the worst cases, humanity buckled in days.”

Levi fought a shiver. Then his jaw slackened. “You know. You know how it spreads. On our side.”

Kronos frowned. “You haven't figured it-”

Levi grabbed his lapels. “You want me to be your snake oil ambassador, you're doing a pretty shit job. How's it spread?”

“Staggered conversion.”

“What?” He let go.

“When Intermipol realized samples of the viral Titania had been stolen, they launched a clandestine operation to destroy any remaining remnants of it within radical enclaves. My agents tell me nearly all missing samples have been accounted for as of 2089. That means a miniscule few – if any at all – have been exposed to viral Titania in the past twelve years.”

“The global survey-” Levi stilled. “We were being tailed. Cam's caught a few dozen spooks wearing the same face-mask to dupe facial rec. That was-”

“Me. So trust that I know what you mean. The Trinidad Incursion. Mexico City. We saw it all.”

“Then you know how many of them are out there-”

“There are. Frighteningly many. But not as many as there would have been.”

Staggered conversion. Kronos admitted to synthesizing the viral Titania on Core in such a way that a human's transformation did not take place immediately. Some transitioned sooner than others. It was a stopgap to mitigate the potential for an outbreak the scale of which Kronos had been unable to stop in thousands of worlds prior.

“Imagine, Levi, ten thousand Paneceas every hour of every day.”

“I'd rather fucking not.”

Even so, his throat went dry at the mere idea. If not for Kronos, they would have all long been dead.

But if not for Kronos, titans wouldn't exist at all.

“So this...” Levi went on, “staggered conversion means there are people out there who're still infected and have no idea.”

“Yes. But every day, their numbers fall.”

“Yeah,” Levi sneered. “Cause when they do turn, we get to kill them.”

“Not anymore. You won't have to take another soul.”

 

*

 

It was an incalculable blow against Kronos. Survey captured hundreds of his agents. Cleanup was slowed by radiation and debris but otherwise unobstructed – Pixis made it clear that the DOD was not interested in playing the part of Intermipol. Public pressure certainly did its part in forcing their cooperation. Levi's former team, including agent Iaso, assisted in relocating and questioning Kronos' agents.

Iaso's profits soared. Despite Survey's efforts to provide medical assistance at no or reduced cost to those afflicted in the sweeping incursion, Iaso simply possessed far more resources to accommodate an attack of that scale.

Declassified Intermipol intel continued streaming out from the wreckage of the organization's fall. Millions of documents were released to the public. Though there were too many to process all at once, a concerted search by both Survey agents and independent journalists turned up documents that connected Intermipol agents and the Department of Defense to contracts dictating the construction of the massive underground holding pens for the thirteen slain titans.

It wasn't long before the public followed the bread crumbs to another kind of contract – the one that built Panacea tower. Intermipol, too, had been involved in the contract negotiation in constructing the hollow shell within the tower that had been used for years to house and conduct trials on titan subjects.

That is, until the day Panacea operatives misjudged titan growth rates. Until the day the tower core was not enough to contain them. Until the day a Panacea operative set off an EMP to force an evacuation and let the Survey Corps deal with the aftermath.

The concurrent massacre of Survey agents at a nearby subway station, too, was revealed to have been designed by an extreme wing of Intermipol to pivot the media's attention to a fabricated rift within the Survey Corps that escalated into a shootout. That had carried the news cycle just long enough to drown reports of the incursion itself. Internal documents showed wide-scale reprimands for this wing of Intermipol after the fact, suggesting the Intermipol board hadn't even known of the operation until its completion.

Even before the film's release, Intermipol had been fracturing.

The world was in the throes of financial collapse. A growing number began to blame the Survey Corps, even those it had liberated from titans, even those whose family Survey released from reintegration. Hunger broached no nuance.

Nanaba placed Erwin under guard and, when he was well enough to be discharged, house arrest. There will never, she said to him, be a repetition of the Sunbelt incursion.

Despite Erwin insisting his involvement not be swept under, Nanaba decided to do just that, going as far as to order him explicitly not to speak a single word of his involvement to anyone ever again.

It really wasn't much of a punishment, dying in some cell waiting to be prosecuted for a crime he'll never live to serve time for, but Nanaba, strangely, wasn't interested in humoring Erwin's morbid fantasies.

“I sentence you to comfort,” she'd said wryly.

Nanaba also wanted full dominion of their, in her words, 'dream business', and to forbid Erwin from influencing that particular discussion after his 'half-cocked cowboy performance in the Sunbelt'. The first was in unanimous agreement, but even Nanaba wasn't able to defend the second point too far. Mike argued that Erwin's perspective was crucial, more so than even his own or Hange's. They couldn't ignore that Kronos switched from one instance of Erwin to the next and no one else. In any case, it was long past time to pool their knowledge instead of erecting still more barriers. Nanaba conceded.

She outlined their objectives going forward, and was met with no more objection. Egret, Jones, and anyone who could possibly corroborate Dragunov, needed to be found and brought in for questioning. Even if every word he said was true, hearing another testimony side by side would allow them pick out inconsistencies and compile a more honest look at this Elysian Titania.

Dragunov was questioned again. Erwin was shown the tapes as soon as he could walk and relocate to the downtown safe house.

Dragunov was a great deal more forthcoming to them about the thirteen titans. The original thirteen. Mike asked why he overlooked these little details in his official testimony.

“Wasn't the right time,” Dragunov said. “You wouldn't have let me finish. Woulda stormed outta here and killed them. Turns out you didn't even need me to do that.”

Willing participants. Tissue stockpiles. He even explained, to Hange's unbridled interest, how it is they discovered how to preserve titan tissue without it evaporating. Dragunov's eyes had left Mike's and glanced at the two-way mirror, no doubt knowing who was furiously scribbling down his instructions from the other side.

It was an unconvincing gift, but Erwin doubted Hange shared his opinion. They had run off to test Dragunov's instructions before Mike had even left the room.

Erwin didn't stop them, nor did he have any authority to do so. He did, though, ask Hange how difficult it would be to restart work on the machine – the Pond – in case they could not find or access Kronos' own.

Hange was all for it. There was just one problem.

 

*

 

A man with a gut as large as his laugh and a face rosy red said he hadn't hungered nor eaten in three weeks.

A ruddy child with hair to her knees popped her gum and dug a photo out of her pink rucksack of a deathly pale girl with not a hair on her and a heart that wouldn't beat quite right and the child insisted they were one and the same.

An older pair with blinding smiles pointed to the back of their mouths at still-growing teeth, sterling-white. Each one, to the last, had chipped and rotted and slipped out, loosened by vials passed around for a buck or two that let them forget hunger if only for a day, and then an hour, and then a minute. In days, they abandoned a combined century of addiction between them.

Levi didn't bother to remember how many nines followed the decimal point of Titania's ninety-nine percent success rate.

Each patient, having been told of Levi's switch, greeted him no less warmly than they had before. They embraced him as they would any member of the family.

He was running out of excuses. Not introducing Titania was becoming tantamount to sentencing the sick and hungry and suffering in Core to death himself.

That would mean switching Kronos. He alone knew how to synthesize it, had done it so often – Levi should really ask how often – that any hiccup or freak accident or unforeseen obstacle would mean nothing to him. He'd seen it all. He'd done in for countless universes already. He'd done it, he said earlier, for Han.

It didn't help Levi's unbiased judgment that it was essentially Erwin who spun this yarn, an instance of Erwin, spun it like only Erwin could. He could always listen to Erwin. It was easy to listen to Erwin.

Erwin had been searching for the truth all his life. This one had found it. Now Levi could give it to his own.

If any of this was even real.

“It's all staged,” Levi said in passing to Kronos, who had retreated just past the clinic to give Levi space. He followed Levi as he stormed out, heading he knew not where. “Anyone can manipulate some photos. Pay a few actors to memorize some sob story,” Levi said, and hoped Kronos wouldn't catch that he himself barely believed his own words.

Kronos hummed. “You don't believe that.”

Hopes dashed.

Levi stopped and leaned on the glass panes that revealed the bustling, atrium-scale laboratories beyond the hallway. “Fine. Miracle drug. Fixes everything. Flu. Bad breath. Bent dick.” Levi considered him. It was one thing to guess at why Kronos would want to switch no one but himself. It was another to hear it from the man himself. Levi crossed his arms. “So send someone else.”

Kronos gave him a small smile. “You don't believe that either.”

“Send. Someone. Else,” Levi said.

“No one understands it like I do.”

“Convenient.”

Kronos stepped closer. He blocked out the light, and Levi was forced to crane his neck to meet his eye, yet it didn't feel like he meant to tower over him, didn't feel like something aggressive, something intimidating. His words warmed Levi's ear. His voice froze Levi's spine. “Find me someone who understands it. Someone who's developed it. Find someone who knows how to administer it. When to administer it. When not to. Someone who knows how to distribute it in a controlled environment, who knows its potential side effects and how to mitigate them inside and out, someone who knows what to do if something, anything, goes wrong, who knows Titania as intimately as if they had been developing it, testing it, incubating it, and distributing it for as many years as there have ever been motes of dust in every beam of light on your world and mine, and I will give them my blessing and send them on their way.”

Only then was Levi aware – though in retrospect, it should have been obvious – that he possessed not his own reflexes or muscle memory but Dragunov's. He didn't remember parting his mouth or baring his neck. He straightened and hoped the glare from the labs washed out the flush creeping into his face.

Kronos straightened, too. “You may speak to as many people as you wish. Patients, past and present. Technicians. Engineers. Biochemists. With enough time, I'm sure you could memorize the entire process, if you wanted. But I think you understand, Levi,” he said, “that there is a little more to a thing like this than blindly following a set of instructions.”

“Don't patronize me,” Levi breathed, not daring to hear what he sounded like otherwise.

Kronos looked away. “I'm sorry. I never meant to,” Kronos said, maddeningly sincere. He looked beyond the panes and into the lab as a centrifuge began to hum.

“You're free to roam the tower.“

Levi was sure he'd misheard.

“Roam the tower,” Levi repeated.

“I want no secrets between us.”

Levi scoffed. “Even the room with the Pond?”

Kronos shrugged. “Unless you can somehow convince Dragunov to lay in the machine at the same time, as well as assemble a team of technicians to operate the Ponds on both sides, to calibrate them and make sure the two of you come out alive and not melded into each other's minds and destined to madness from a misaligned switch – you won't quite get the result you're hoping for. I think you'll understand why that room will remain locked in the same way that I wouldn't let you jump out of a plane without a parachute.”

Kronos placed a quick, barely there hand on his shoulder and Levi let him. It didn't occur to him not to. It was easy to let him. It was easy to pretend it was reassuring.

So Levi took him up on his offer – or called his bluff – and left to wander the tower.

All presumption. All self-assurance.

Kronos watched him go. A technician passed by, but Levi had already left. If he had stayed, he might have seen the technician's brow line with confusion, might have recognized her from the team that coordinated his switch, might have heard her apologize for intruding and ask Kronos whether it was as he just said, whether it was possible after all to switch Levi again. And had Levi stayed, he would have heard the man's low, regretful “No.”

*

 

The dreams were becoming less frequent again.

Mike hadn't dreamt in days. Hange get in touch with Han long enough to talk without Halcion.

If any doubts remained that Levi and Dragunov had been switched back into their natural universes, this is what felled them. Without Levi's unnatural switch to offset Erwin's own, it wasn't enough to thin the membrane. The dreams would not be returning this time.

Erwin never imagined he'd actually miss them. No one knew – or maybe they knew well enough not to broach it – that this was the second time he lost Levi. He will never see the Levi from the walls again, barring Halcion, and in his state, taking even a child's dose could put him to sleep for good.

Levi, for the second time in as many weeks, was gone.

Hange gaped when Erwin sat at a desk in the safe house study, lay his arm atop it, and just barely curled his fingers.

“Hange,” he said, but they were already nodding, already bouncing on their feet. “The Pond. Before you forget. We need to-”

“Yeah. Yeah, yeah yeah, got it.”

Mike leaned against a bookcase, arms crossed, not moving even after Hange bolted.

“It worked, you know,” Mike said.

Erwin cocked his head in question.

“The tissue preserving process. Hange did it. We're quintupling lab trials. Recruiting more chemists than soldiers. Levi handed us a lifeline.”

“You mean Dragunov.”

“Right,” Mike said, unconvinced.

“This is nothing to him, Mike, or to Kronos,” Erwin reminded him, wary of his friend'sincreasingly open doubt. “To them-”

“But it's something to us,” Mike said. “A big something. Erwin…” He uncrossed his arms and pulled up a chair, sitting backwards and resting his arms across the back in one fluid motion. All he needed was a hat to tip, maybe spurs to jangle. Erwin wondered if Mike knew how many habits he borrowed from his counterpart, how many stuck around. Wondered f Erwin would even live to catch them all.

“Just figure we might be going about this with too much...” Mike sighed, and looked at him hard, as if he'd just decided something. “I can't do this. Kinda lost the taste for subtlety somewhere along the way.” He looked at Erwin square in the eye. “You're compromised, Ewin. You're hurt-”

“So it finally comes out,” Erwin snapped, riding a sudden flush of fury that swept him under. “Did you play my advocate for Nanaba only to take me down yourself?”

Mike's brows shot up.

Erwin blinked. “I-I didn't mean-”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Exhibit A, pal.”

Erwin paled as he registered, belatedly, what he'd said. He gaped. “I'm so sorry, I-”

“Don't.”

“I didn't...I-”

“Don't make me start listing things, Erwin. I hate listing.”

“-I must have just- it wasn't-”

“Okay. Alright.” Mike stood. He raised one finger. “Ten-ish years of titan wetwork and corporate espionage that got us clenching our assholes so tight in case anything got out about our little Intermipol surprise that I'm still amazed everything's operational downstairs.” He raised a second finger. “The dreams. Kind of a big deal.” A third finger. “Getting shot.” A fourth.“The premier.” A fifth. “Reintegration.”

“That's isn't-”

“Six.” A fifth raised. “Losing Levi.”

“That won't affect-”

“Seven.” A sixth raised. Mike scoffed. “A fucking nuke.”

“I was nowhere near-”

“Eight. Losing Levi again. No, don't look so surprised. If I lost Nan and the only way I could see her again was through dreams about some...some weird walls and flying soldiers, I'd be outta commission for a week if I lost that, too. You haven't even let yourself blink.”

Mike knelt by him and grabbed his shoulders. “Levi's not here so the job of royal babysitter falls to me again. Look at me. Don't. Ignore. What these things did to you. Let us help you.”

“I'm not as fragile as you-”

“Damn it,” Mike yelled. “you have four, five fucking weeks!” He let go of his shoulders. Erwin barely breathed, frozen stiff in shame. Mike wasn't like this. Mike didn't yell. Not like this. Erwin made him do that.

Mike rose and turned away, slumping against the bookcase. In a small voice, a whisper's whisper, he said, “People in our line of work don't get four weeks. They get a flash o' teeth. Maybe the smell of rot hits 'em. Then the credits roll. Used to think folks with advanced notice are the luckiest bastards in the world. They get to do all the things Survey vets don't get to do, Erwin. They get to say goodbye.”

“I don't deserve-”

Mike rounded on him. “No. Maybe you don't. But if you waste this – this opportunity – going paranoid on us and pushing everyone away, you're insulting every soldier who got nothin' but a titan's pearly whites. Don't want it to be about you? Done. Do it for them. Live like you'd want all those names on all those tens of thousands of placards and memorials to have lived had they had the kinda time you have. That fair?”

It hurt to swallow. Erwin didn't remember when Mike's eyes became rimmed red, when his own began to sting.

"It wasn't a glory thing," Erwin said, so low that he was sure Mike hadn't heard.

“I know,” Mike said. He huffed a laugh. “Nearly a damn year I dream of plains and spurs and lassos and the one running off playing cowboy is you.”

Erwin frowned. “You've done your fair share.”

Mike gave him a small smile. “Shame it ain't calmer. Can't imagine the clucking you and Nan woulda done behind my back for bailing when I did.”

“We'd never, ever do that,” Erwin admonished. “You know we always do it to your face.”

Mike grinned larger, then. He sniffed, hunched over like it hurt to keep himself upright, like it hurt to be.

“Mike. Promise me you won't keep me in the dark. Let me help you investigate and search. Show me testimony tapes. Please. I can't stand sitting here seeing more of the inside of a toilet bowl than the Survey wings.”

Mike said nothing.

“I understand,” Erwin added. “About the- about everything that's happened. I'm not the same person I was when all this started. You said it yourself. None of us are. But as far as we know, this Kronos entity or virus or whatever it is, it possesses instances of myself. Cutting me off will-”

“I know. You'll remember I made that exact argument to Nan,” Mike said wryly.

Erwin sighed with something like relief. “Thank you, Mike.”

“Then you promise me one thing,” Mike said.

“Anything.”

Mike considered him, looked him up and down. “We'll deal with Kronos. No matter what happens between now and when you- when you're gone, we'll deal with it. We always have. This is no different. Ah-” Mike exclaimed when Erwin frowned. “No different. We deal with titans. We deal with Intermipol. We deal with this.”

Mike sighed. “So if you get it in your head to kill yourself thinking that'll make Kronos go away or make it easier on us or whatever horseshit you'll use to justify it, I want you pulling that trigger knowing the second I get wind of it, I'm scrubbing Levi's name from every record ever written, mailed, stamped, typed, you name it. Not yours. His. By the time I'm done, he'll have never existed."

Erwin didn't register Mike's meaning, couldn't find the underlying metaphor, the double entendre. He couldn't possibly mean what he had just said on its face. His ears started ringing.

Something in his face must have tipped Mike off. “No double meaning, here, chief. You pull the trigger, so do I.”

He was serious. Mike was serious. Erwin boiled and he rose and he ignored his vision blackening at the edges and ignored the unsteadiness in his step and said, hurt and furious and disbelieving and sickened, “You would conduct this- this purge-”

“You won't live for yourself, Erwin. I know. But you'd live for him.”

Erwin didn't remember grabbing Mike's front, didn't remember shoving him against a wall. But he knew when someone wasn't willing to fight back. He knew when someone had already won.

He wasn't bluffing. Erwin knew he intended to carry out his promise and knew even more that he would do it with extravagant precision and he would hate every last second of it and he would do it anyway.

Relocating reintegration victims had meant not only inventing new identities but removing all trace of them from Intermipol's prying eyes. His efforts had been clumsy, at first. Intermipol had found the first few escapees Mike had relocated, and just barely missed discovering who it was who aided them. Mike was careful after that. He never made a mistake again. And he wouldn't make one this time.

The derringer Erwin had taken to keeping in his jacket burned a hole in his chest.

Mike searched his face. He glanced at his jacket, looking for the telltale lines. “You've already thought about it.” It wasn't a question.

“You were there."

"Dying in the line of duty's not the same as finishing what Foley started." 

Erwin stepped away and sat back down at the desk, head spinning.

"Don't do this," Erwin pleaded.

"Ain't doin a thing if you don't."

"Thought experiment, Mike. Say that stopping Kronos means killing me."

"I'm not saying I'll cross a bridge I don’t even know exists."

"That's where the thought experiment part comes in."

Mike rolled his eyes. "No kidding.”

"If he's-"

"Erwin, sometimes you can't be commander ten-steps-ahead."

Erwin conceded. He couldn't think about this anymore. He pushed Mike to go for the sake of being able to vacate his breakfast in relative privacy. He loathed the looks facing politely away whenever he rose in the middle of a visit to obey the edicts of his roiling gut. Drawn. Pained. He asked that they visit no more than once a day, then every third day. He couldn't take the look on their faces when they were sure he wasn't watching.  

Cold sweat chilled his face even as a prickling flush spread across it. He knocked the toilet lid down and settled against it, waiting for the aftershocks to lessen. 

If not for the medication, he wouldn't even be able to stand, much less speak. It wasn't kind to his liver or truly anything else, but he would rather be alert for three weeks than bed ridden for eight. He didn't mention this detail to anyone else.

He could barely stomach, too, his disappointment in Mike, Hange and Nan for so suddenly forgoing the unspoken tenet of Survey life for his sake and his only. Agents died. They were mourned and buried. The world went on spinning. It should be no different for him. He deserved no more or less than any agent ever fated to death by his orders. And if it were up to him, he deserved less than that.

That night, Hange stopped by to update Erwin on their work with the Pond. They intimated that Dragunov was growing restless. That he wanted to see Erwin. Erwin refused.

Hange attempted to argue for barely one breath before Erwin made clear precisely how little he thought of the idea.

He realized it, then. Mike, even Hange, may be acclimating to Dragunov's wild claims because of the mere potential that Erwin could be saved by Titania.

And Erwin knew then, too, why Kronos felt safe dropping the bomb knowing Erwin was near, knowing Erwin wouldn't leave, but knowing, too, that he wouldn't have been abandoned by the Survey Corps either. He gambled that Erwin would live but just enough, just barley, that it would not be Erwin  considering Titania, but those nearest him. He gambled that even hardened Survey veterans crumbled to the promise of a miracle. And slowly, surely, with every pained look and worried glance, it was paying off.

Erwin knew. He knew because, were he in Kronos' place, he would have done the same.

 

*

 

Levis wanderings were doggedly interrupted by stings of deja vu and the bone-marrow chill of nostalgia. 

Neither made any sense. He'd never seen that passing agent before, never before heard another's low hum or the rhythm of another's echoing steps as if one end of a wire was wrapped around his heart and the other to that agents descending foot and snapped it taut at every step and squeezed again and again and again.

 He hadn’t dreamed of these parts of the tower, of these quiet and unassuming day to day rituals and rhythms of its inhabitants.

It must be related the reflexes he never remembered having. He was more sensitive to the cold. He couldn't sleep on too soft a bed. His hearing sharpened to a degree that he turned wildly at some deafening and incomprehensible sound only to see a fledgeling wren hopping by a window from six meters away.

He didn't want to know these things about Dragunov. He didn't want to understand him. He didn't want to acknowledged that the very act he abhorred him for was one he alone never accomplished, didn't want it to register that the man just might be as human as himself.

"Captain."

Levi stared, disbelieving. It was Jones, all six foot two of her, looking like she'd just been shooting the shit with an off duty officer in a break room. She popped a sandwich out of her mouth and excused herself before rising and shutting the door behind her.

"I heard you had been switched, but I-" she said.

Levi squinted. "Wait. You're Jones' counterpart, right?"

"No, captain. it's me, it's really me. You trained me. I couldn't get my engine to start in our trial run in Johannesburg, remember? Damn near made a helidisc engineer out of me for that one.”

Levi gestured at her vaguely. “But how...?”

“Egret switched me."

"So the Jones I bailed with Isabel-"

"That was my counterpart. The one who was born here. Not that it matters. We're basically one person, now." She led him to the broad hallway windows and perched on the sill.

"What?" Levi said, having taken a moment to decipher her meaning and coming up spectacularly empty.

"A lot of the agents here feel the same. Feel like setting up all these boundaries are unnecessary if they're essentially one person, give or take. Just twice the experience, the memories. They see their counterparts as parts of a whole-"

"Wow. Okay," Levi said. "New, more important question, seeing as you say you're my Jones and sound like you're pretty chummy," Levi's voice, which had been rising, lowered sharply as he seethed through gritted teeth, "with the fucking enemy – what the fuck is going on?"

Jones didn't look worried. Didn't look surprised, either. If he could know that he would keep his head on right if he acknowledged it fully, he could almost say she looked bored.

"They're not our enemy, captain."

"I know that line, Jones. So they reintegrated you, too."

Jones sighed, for once looking more pensive, more regretful than apathetic. "Egret reintegrated Isabel against direct orders. I wasn't. It wasn't necessary, they said. I was outnumbered. Outgunned. Couldn't do a thing without getting Isabel in trouble. I'm sorry, captain."

"If Kronos thinks I'll be bought with selective honesty, he can keep thinking."

Kronos had explained to him in great detail the ignoble split between himself and his favorite bird themed messenger. 

It made no difference. In the interest of coming back to Core, Kronos and Egret and these sisters Levi had been hearing so much about may as well all be one and the same.

"Kr- you mean this world's Erwin?"

"Do me an earth shattering favor here, and don't call him that."

Jones gave him an odd look. "Isn't Kronos the bloke who ate his baby all those years ago? Every radical's granddaddy? That guy?"

"Don't meander, Jones."

"We're not in the air, sir."

"Think you're clever."

"Born clever, sir."

"Good answer. Now give me another."

"Sir."

"Egret reintegrated Isabel to trick her into switching me."

"Yes, sir."

"I assume you were switched when this was going on."

"Yes, sir."

"And you're still switched now."

"Sir."

Levi clicked his tongue. He had him. He let Levi roam the tower and apparently never imagined that he'd question his own agent. Pathetic.

"So what'd he tell you?" Levi asked. "Didn't pass some arbitrary security check? Reams of paperwork? Planets not aligned?"

"Sir?"

"Why the hell are you still switched, if Egret did it? If she's such an enemy of the state, why hasn't Kronos switched you back?"

Jones didn't answer immediately.

Levi looked over his shoulder. "Are they hurting you? Are they forcing you to stay?"

"No-"

"Don't lie to me, there's no shame in it. If you're-"

"I chose to stay, captain."

Levi crossed his arms. It was worse than he thought.

"So they did reintegrate you."

"No-"

"If they wanted, they could make you forget it even happened-"

"If you have an ounce of respect for me, captain, you'll let me finish a damn sentence," she snapped, the English in her accent doubling in strength.

That, at least, sounded like Jones. They didn't take away everything.

"You're aware," she said, "of Erwin's-"

"Kronos."

She gave him a look. "-little miracle."

"Don't be naive, Jones."

"I have eyes, captain. I have ears and a nose and a mouth and that's all I have to tell right from left and shit from perfume. If I'm being misled, then it's the show of the century. With the kind of production involved in making it look like limbs are growing back in real time, so real and so fast you can see the skin stitching itself with your own eyes, with the cost of that smoke and those mirrors? Might as well use the cash to actually develop the damn serum for real.”

Levi had seen it. Within an hour, a drop-in's mangled hand had straightened, had torn free of its mottled callouses and flushed pink its former grey pallor. He'd seen a dozen more like it, seen even Kronos' hand.

But he couldn't believe it. If he believed it, it was real. If it was real, he couldn't ignore it any longer. Couldn't ignore what Titania has done, what it could do.

Jones picked at her nails. “Abrams and Singh could have survived.”

He scowled. “Don't.”

“I've seen worse get treated down there.”

“If this is all about them-”

“And why not? Why not make it about them?” she asked, hand poised on her hip as she shifted on the sill to face him fully. “Why else do anything in the world? Why fight, why even breathe?”

“You have a duty-”

“To protect. To defend. Tell me honestly, captain. Is the rumor mill getting desperate here or do you actually have some say in introducing Titania to our side?”

“This isn't about that-”

“I'm making it about that. How many thousands of Survey vets would we be able to rehabilitate in _hours_? How many lives could be saved every day, every hour-”

“What are the chances it could even be developed on our side?”

“If it can't, it can't. Why not try? Have I been gone so long that we ignore incursions now because they're too dangerous?”

“That's not the sa-”

“Did we back down from Intermipol because they were too large or too suffocating?”

Levi said nothing. There was nothing he could say.

“Captain,” she pressed, “why not try?”

Levi exhaled harshly. “Do you trust him?”

Jones mulled it over. “I've spoken to him. Way too damn polite...I know, I know,” she said at Levi's drawn face, “Not saying much coming from me. One thing to be nice to someone who has the potential to sway...well, you.”

“You're really showing his cards, here.”

“No one's hiding them. He's not hiding them. Shit, he's throwing them in your face. But he didn't tell me to convince you. Only let me loose, let me talk to whoever I wanted, go wherever I wanted. Looks like you're doing the same.”

“Talk to his adoring - paid - lackies, you mean.”

“You'll know it when you chat them all up, but I'll save you the surprise. Half of the people in this tower used to work, directly or indirectly, for the sisters, captain. Don't take my word for it.”

“Doesn't take a lot to make anyone flip and say what you want.”

“Keep going like this, McCarthy, and maybe one day you'll even convince yourself.”

Levi raised a brow.

“Sir,” Jones added.

Levi sighed and crossed his arms.

“You haven't considered it, have you?” she asked. “Giving Magnolia her leg back, and Church, his eyes.”

 Levi saw red.

“He tell you to say that? Tell you to hold my hand a little while and then hit below the belt?”

She swung her legs over the sill and climbed down, matching his vehemence with her own and then some.

“I'd sooner hit below the belt than abandon people in need, people hungry and dying-" 

“People aren’t meant to regrow arms like lizards and live this long- "

“And who are you to decide we can't be more, do more? Would you have said the same had you been born earlier, that people weren’t meant to live past forty? Or that we didn't belong in the sky or on the moon? I hear how you talk, captain, you can't even hide it anymore. How you can't even convince yourself."

She was right. He couldn't. Not after what he'd seen, what he'd heard. He had long since stopped arguing from a place of sincere conviction, had long since been pushed into playing the devil's advocate, and if he was wrong, if his inaction consigned humanity to suffering and hunger and death that could have been so easily, so unconditionally relieved, then he would be the devil himself.

He hadn't thought about Farlan and Isabel. He hadn't allowed himself. He'd felt not the barest temptation to, having rejected Titania before seeing it, knowing it, before even knowing its name. 

Levi slumped against the window, the back of his head resting against the cool glass. Everything they had taken for gospel was wrong. They had been so sure that this would just be another mission to complete, another incursion to put down. Killing a titan demanded little thought. Subduing a radical incursion, even less so.

If Levi went on distrusting this man who looked like Erwin, who sounded like Erwin, and who, to every last agent in this tower, was Erwin, and it so happened that every word he said was sincere, and Titania was all it seemed and all it promised and more, he could singularly damn humanity. 

And if Levi allowed himself to be taken in by the well-spun tricks of a man - a being - older than Levi or anyone could fathom, and allow him to cross over into a universe connected to eleven billion others, he could singularly damn humanity.

Levi rubbed his eyes. He was tired. He was so tired. “Why're you hanging around here, anyway?”

“Waiting,” Jones said. She hopped back on the sill, legs crossed beneath her.

“Waiting?”

“For a second chance. Stay, captain.”

He stayed. And in a few minutes, he watched Abrams and Singh round the corner and wave hello.

 

*

 

It wasn't like before, when Levi and Erwin were only separated by distance, when Hange's cognition and Mike's olfaction were so barely affected that they had hardly noticed it. Erwin, too, didn't recall more change in his arm at the time than a seemingly random waxing and waning of sensation in his fingers.

But with Levi's switch resolved, the dreams stopped nearly overnight. Erwin could feel his arm again, could even move it with enough effort. Mike swore he lost his sense of smell entirely, though it was more likely the effect of the sharp falloff in range and specificity in a single night after living so long with olfaction so precise and with such reach.

If Hange had contacted Han a day, even an hour or two later than they had, they would not have made it. Hange confirmed it in between pacing up and down the walls and managing somehow to look exhausted at the same time. When Erwin rose that morning, Hange had already let themself into the safe room and was clanging around in the kitchen.

But they had reached Han, and for what may well have been the very last time. Mike came as soon as he heard, and set his laptop between them through which Nanaba joined. Moblit sat stiffly nearby, face stormy and eyes watching Hange and Hange only - no one doubted how little he enjoyed the thought of Hange switching again. 

 Hange paced wildly for a few seconds more, startlingly feverish despite having taken just under enough Halcion to put them to sleep for good. But they woke up. And they had news.

Han had been apoplectic.

Hange wrung their hands and raked them through their hair and rubbed their eyes as they told it. Han had nearly exploded when Hange had managed, just barely, to curl their fingers enough to spell out their questions. 

Questions begging the answer to whether Han had, by chance, withheld a detail or two about Kronos' alleged interference in their universe.

The time dilation had been in their favor again. Though Hange was out for a few minutes, it afforded them weeks on Han's side. It was enough time for Han to shout and stomp a little at the indignity before calming down just enough to run as many tests and pilfer as many medical and historical records as they could before the idea of Kronos' involvement incensed them yet again.

"So Dragunov was lying about 3713," Erwin said.

Hange bobbed their foot so quickly it was becoming a blur.

“MmmmmMmm…not really.”

Dragunov had gone into detail about the sort of transformations the human body experienced under the influence of Titania. Apart from dramatically lengthened lifetimes and metabolisms restructured in such a way in conjunction with one's musculature and neurology that one could last years without food and months without water, there were other, specific, details. Rapid regeneration. Total recovery as long as the brain stem and the areas of the brain most crucial to motor function were left reasonably intact. Near-perfect memory recall. Vastly improved cognition. 

They should have known. A thousand years was nowhere near enough time for any species to naturally develop changes of this complexity. Even with technological enhancements.

Han had sworn up and down, Hange said, that the ship's technicians themselves developed cognitive augmentations, but even crossing off cognitive ability altogether, Han could not explain away everything else.

So Hange, having growing control of Han's arms, had shot Han in the foot.

Nanaba groaned. Mike muttered, "Of course you did." Moblit grit his teeth.

"And then?" Erwin asked.

Hange's foot bobbed at mach one. Finally, they rose and paced, their steps simmering down to a more reasonable mach two. 

"We healed. I healed. They healed. Three days." They drilled a hole in the common area with their feet. "Three days. Walking just fine. Just three days."

"So Han was lying?" Erwin pressed.

"No. Han was- Han was- Han-" They stopped. "Thought it was normal. Asked if we heal this fast. Said no. Asked Han if this was another augment. Said no. Asked to see pre-dome-collapse records. None. Well, not none, few. Couldn't get em all aboard, needed room for people. Food-" Hange went on pacing. "Didn't know. Han didn't know."

Nanaba scoffed. "How do you not know you're basically superhuman?"

"Didn't know. Or didn't remember," Hange said. "Han assumed universe was just different, you know? When they switched, they just - they had no idea that was even possible-"

“Mmhm,” Nan hummed, unconvinced.

"It was different for them," Hange groaned. "Han didn't dream. They had no preparation, no idea, not like we did. We had months. We knew what to expect, more or less. We know because we saw it. Shit, if a galactic fucking titan was on my ass one second and gone the next, I'd've been just fine if everyone turned green, had a third arm, whatever-"

"What does this mean for us?" Mike asked.

"Means Han doesn't know," Hange said. "Kronos could have introduced Titania before they switched. They could've taken it as normal. For that universe. That ship surviving was more unrealistic to them than popping out a bullet. One second, you're surrounded, the next - nothing?"

Erwin leaned forward. "Then Han's crewmates would know."

"They didn't. But they guessed." Hange gave Erwin a searching look.

"Go on," Erwin prompted, though Hange's sudden severity made him wonder if he wanted to know.

"Kronos could've crossed through Erwin before the domes even fell." 

He wouldn't have even needed to explain what Titania was, according to one of Han's crewmates, one of a mere handful who hadn't been born aboard the ship. He could have marketed it to treat anything - the flu,  the common cold - and though that wouldn't have been untrue, it would have done quite a bit more.  It could have spread through the domed populace, hidden by a people who knew better than to draw attention to a miracle, knew from experience how quickly it could be taken away. 

But the Council would have discovered it eventually. Discovered men, women and children who needed only half a storage room's worth of grain and a few barrels of water to last them the rest of their lives. Any living crewmen who remembered the domes had been children then, but even they recalled the upheaval. No one labored because no one needed to. No one shopped because no one needed. The old order was collapsing. The Council hunted for their perpetrator, and maybe Kronos hadn't been careful enough. Maybe he hadn't swept up every well before he went on his way. Maybe the council followed the bread crumbs back to the Survey Armada's Erwin Smith. Or maybe Erwin had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time enough times for the Council to notice him first.

"So the thrust of this," Nanaba said, "is that Kronos sees this universe as one of his triumphs – and no one even knows it was him who did it? He took no credit?"

"Would Erwin?" Mike asked.

The temperature dropped. No one seemed to want to look at anyone else for what felt like an hour, least of all at Erwin, though it may have only been seconds before Nanaba cleared her throat.

"No. He wouldn't."

Erwin heard every third word after that, though even that estimate was generous. In short, 3713B Erwin had been suspected and brought in on overblown charges that led to his sentencing and soon, the Armada's proposed scuttling and the domes' fall, much like his counterpart from 3713A.

If these crewmates' rumors were to be believed, then everything Dragunov said checked out.

Kronos hadn't even informed anyone of what he was doing, made no attempt to connect the serum to his name.

Han's crew members remembered him, the Erwin from 3713B – the version of him who survived the Council's sentence – unlike 3713A—but had passed before Han's arrival and commanded the Armada's sole remaining ship. Now that Hange knew substantially more from Dragunov since their last meeting with Han and knew to ask the right questions, they learned, too, that these crewmates noticed long absences on his part, and one even recalled the man suffering debilitating headaches and blackouts leading up to his death.

“Makes sense,” Nanaba said. “Having Kronos muck around in your head-”

“Wasn't Kronos,” Hange said. “Han's Moblit is the only one of us who survived the 3713B titan swarm. He's the only one who knew 3713B Erwin the longest, knew him even before commanded the Armada. He said...he said the Council held him for months leading up to the trial.”

Mike looked pained. Moblit looked down.

“I take it,” Nanaba said, “It wasn't a five star experience.”

“No.” Hange frowned and blinked rapidly. “It's my own fault,” Hange said. “I jumped the gun. I was so sure it was because of Kronos when I described 3713B Erwin's death. And when I told Han about Titania, about what it meant, what it did for them, what it could do for us-”

“So those whispers from Han's first Erwin…and the headaches from the second….” Mike wondered aloud.

“Might not have a thing to do with Kronos. It could've…it could've been anything. What Levi heard with the mind-sharing tech, I was so sure, and they were so sure, but it was...it could've been anything. They could've just been hearing Erwin's paranoia, coulda named him Kronos like we had for the same reason….that I'm always Hange in every universe. That Mike is always Mike. For the same reason we all somehow end up meeting, always end up together every time. It's just one of those things. Just...one of those constants,” Hange said. “We charged into this assuming Kronos...that he's inhuman or a virus or something but-”

“Was gonna say,” Nanaba said. “I  _thought_  that sounded too black and white-”

“If there's the slightest chance,” Mike said, “that Dragunov is sincere, that Kronos is who he says he is-”

“You are all actively,” Erwin interrupted, “looking for reasons to defend a charlatan.”

Everyone in the room stilled.

“I see you're all very suddenly taken in by this fantasy. This science fiction that all of humanity could be  _fixed_  if only poor, misunderstood Kronos could cross over for a day or two.”

“Erwin,” Hange said urgently. “Your, uh, condition isn't a state secret. You were on the evening news. He knows. And he still wants to switch. Doesn't that tell you Titania could-”

“Save me?”

Everyone made a point of not looking at Erwin. Everyone but Mike.

Erwin met his eye. “I wouldn't normally be so egotistic. But I don't normally ignore what I see right in front of me, either.”

Moblit shifted uncomfortably. Hange, remarkably, stood still. Mike didn't look away, but made no move to speak either.

“Let me make one thing abundantly clear,” Erwin said. “My well-being will have no bearing on our decision regarding Kronos.”

Hange squeezed their arms where they crossed them. “Erwin-”

“Regardless, we still have too little to conclude anything,” Erwin said. “Our objectives moving forward are to locate Jones along with Egret and any and all of her accomplices. Once we have testimony with which to compare Dragunov's, we can stop treating intrauniversal gossip as if it bears any weight whatsoever. Nanaba?”

Silence roared for a beat. Everyone looked sufficiently cowed. Even Mike gave a reluctant sigh.

“Yeah,” Nanaba sighed. “You're right. We're getting off track. Not that we don't appreciate your report, Hange. We know how far you had to go to deliver it,” she added.

Hange shrugged noncommittally, but their jaw jutted.

Nanaba said something else, but Erwin couldn't hear it. He stilled and drew his hand as inconspicuously as he could to his middle. The stabbing pains were back. Mike caught the motion and shifted to rise.

“We're done for today! Urgent meeting,” Hange snapped, hooked their arm with Erwin's, and dragged him away.

Hange broke all pretense as soon as they were out of sight and rushed Erwin to the bathroom. Cold sweat beaded his skin as Hange threw a fresh towel over the rim before Erwin emptied his lunch. He breathed harshly as Hange locked the door and seated themself unceremoniously into the tub opposite.

Properly mortified, Erwin wiped his mouth and rested his forehead against the covered rim. “I'm sorr-”

“Oh my god,” was all Hange said. Erwin tried again, which Hange interrupted that time with a well-aimed bar of soap at his head.

He laughed weakly.

They stayed like that a while. Erwin remained where he was as the pains roiled in waves. The splotchy red on his hands he only realized were there when he woke up after the incursion were growing angrier, larger. They stung and peeled. He looked away. It hardly mattered.

But Hange was looking, too. He'd hidden them well enough before, but this must be the first they've seen them. Their eyes flickered to the scarf Erwin had elected to wear after he left the hospital bed, and by their darkened eyes, they might have figured out why.

“Did you-” Erwin cleared his throat and tried again. “Did you get to say goodbye?”

Hange blinked, as if they hadn't heard him at all. Then scoffed, disbelieving. “Time dilation, remember? Had plenty of time to say goodbye. Just not looking forward to doing it again.”

Erwin closed his eyes, not out of annoyance or anything in particular except for sudden bone-deep exhaustion.

“How are you feeling?” He asked, trying not to slur his words with great effort. “Losing your- your memory recall. Cognition, did you call it? The dep-deprogramming center has-has professionals who can help-”

“Stop.”

“It's nothing to be ashamed of,” Erwin said, struggling not to wince as another wave of pain crested. “They'll listen to- to you and they-”

“Please stop.”

Erwin opened one eye and then the other. He raised his thousand-pound head. “What's wrong?” Then more adamantly, “Hange, are you hurt?” because Hange was crying. Hange never cried, not from anything but joy. Those weren't happy tears.

“I'll be okay, Erwin. Sure, I feel a million times slower, feel like I'm near deaf, near blind, feel like everything's a whole lot less colorful and I feel a million times less useful. I've basically trial-tested Titania and now I feel less of a person without it.” They smiled with their mouth. It didn't reach their eyes. “But I'll be okay. I'll be just fine.” They laughed humorlessly. “I'll live.”

Erwin moved to sit against the cool wall, sure that the worst had passed. “Hange,” he pleaded quietly, “How do I make this easier? For you, for everyone?”

Hange huffed. “Can't. Tough titties.”

Erwin laughed, the sound cut off by a sharp intake of breath as his gut rebelled against the sudden movement.

“You know we love you, right?” Hange said. “Like, not as a commander. Or ex-commander. Or whatever. You.”

“Hange-”

“You know, the guy who gets up at the asscrack of dawn not for the job but 'cause he wants to. Guy who pretends he doesn't spend as much time as he does on his hair. Guy who, like, always knows what to say, when to say it, how. And abuses it to get the table free scones at Lily's. We love _you_.”

Erwin clenched his jaw in a flush of anger. “I'd rather you didn't.”

“Shit, yeah, me too,” Hange said as if it were something obvious, and paying no mind to Erwin as he came down from whatever that was, the second time in as many days that he'd spouted something atrocious to a person who least deserved it.

He swallowed thickly. “I didn't mean-”

“Sure you did,” they said, then, with a crude grin, “Wouldn't  _kill you_  to be honest once in a while.”

Erwin turned to them, brows raised. Hange flashed him a shit-eating grin, tear tracks drying on their face as they bobbed their legs against the rim of the tub. Erwin laughed softly. “I'd say 'too soon', but-”

“Oh, I'm getting them all in while I can, Erwin, don't you even think I won't.” They smiled wildly, and it was difficult, absurdly difficult not to return it, but the weight of what Erwin said anchored the corners of his mouth even so.

“I meant it, too, you know. Yeah, it'd be a lot easier not to. For all of us. It'd be a lot easier, come to think of it, not being in the Survey Corps. We don't do easy. We do right.”

Hange stayed with him a while longer, just until he was sure he could leave without diving right back in to obey the demands of his inconsolable gut. Moblit walked Hange home.

That afternoon, Erwin learned from Mike that Dragunov wanted to see him. He refused.

That evening, Erwin learned from Hange that Dragunov wanted to see him. He refused.

Later that evening, Farlan paid Erwin a visit, and he didn't ask, didn't insinuate. He demanded.

Erwin was beginning to regret offering the man that single ounce of goodwill. He hadn't imagined Dragunov would choose to speak to anyone but Farlan, given that he had sufficiently caught up with Isabel and was only ever offered one choice, and Erwin hadn't ignored the possibility that Farlan himself, despite his briefing prior to the meeting, may react less than kindly to the situation, though the conviction with which Farlan strode in and demanded that Erwin see Dragunov was unlike anything Erwin expected. 

It might have been a dischargeable offense had Erwin been his commanding officer.  It might have been insolent were Dragunov any other man.

Erwin considered Farlan, standing tall before him without any of the false bravado or anxious shifting of months before. He was all conviction, every inch of him. Though they disagreed, it didn't dampen Erwin's pride.

It didn't dampen Erwin's own conviction, either.

“Everything he wishes to say to me could be said through an intermediary," Erwin said to him. 

"He doesn't want to deliver a message," Farlan said. "He wants to have a conversation. He wants you to look at him."

Erwin leaned back in his chair and moved aside the documents he'd been poring over in search of clues to Egret's location. "I appreciate your faith in me, Farlan, but I'd rather avoid testing the limits of my ability to remain objective. "

"Did you hear the tapes of my talk with him?"

"No," Erwin said. "Mike offered to bring them to me, informed me that there was nothing in it that was mission-critical. I preferred to give you your privacy.”

"Well, I'm giving you express permission to have a listen. Think there's a few things you might wanna hear."

"Pertinent to our investigations?"

Farlan betrayed himself with the flash of annoyance that crossed his face, though it lasted for only a moment before he returned to a carefully crafted neutrality. 

"Yes."

Erwin gave him a look.

"Character study," Farlan said.

"We have plenty of it. His character is just that. A character. Constructed and delivered to us by a puppeteer."

"So you won't do it."

"Not unless it pertains directly to the investigation."

Farlan hid his disappointment well this time. He nodded noncommittally and turned to leave without a goodbye. 

Before he opened the door, he called over his shoulder:

"It will."

Erwin curled and uncurled his right hand. Not a second's delay in reaction anymore. If not for the bandages not quite concealing the unhealing lesions, it could have been good as new. 

He understood why Farlan would be sympathetic, understood, too, why his heart would strangle his head. If he were sure that he possessed the strength to disavow it from affecting his judgment, Erwin might have even admitted to himself that minding the divide between Levi and Dragunov in his own mind was as pleasant as pounding nails into open sores.

Dragunov is an agent of Kronos. They could prove that much. And that was enough. That had to be enough.

Nanaba called him in two days. They were drawing closer to Egret with the help of the testimony given by the captured Sunbelt agents, and even to Jones, once one confession had lead them to the safehouse Egret had hidden her and Isabel in. But that wasn't all why Nanaba wanted him on the line.

"He's not eating," she said.

Erwin shut his eyes. "What are your orders?"

"We'll take every precaution. I know you don't want-"

"What," Erwin repeated, "are your orders?"

"Sonuvabitch," Nanaba said under her breath, then, with considerably more authority:

"Talk to him."

 

*

 

Kronos invited Levi to dine with him.

Levi agreed, head buzzing from the whiplash of meeting two of his three first helidisc mentees. Rather, their counterparts.

It was becoming difficult to conceptualize who they were, exactly. They looked for all the world like themselves. Abrams still played with her waif-like, waist-length braid, and Singh still laughed like he wanted all the world to hear. 

But Abrams grew up in Tel Aviv. Abrams watched Korean soaps and had a peanut allergy. Singh was a former cellist with a sweet tooth and none-too sweet opinions on modernist architecture. 

But those were the late Abrams and Singh. This Abrams had no allergy, didn't even watch television. This Singh, in his words, couldn't play an instrument to save his life. Yet they spoke to him as warmly as if they truly knew him, though they possessed no memory of it, nothing but what scant details Jones offered when the three had met once before.

And it all - ironically or no, he wasn't sure of anything anymore - had the quality of a dream. The kind of dream in which friends and family and workmates one may have known for years, known all one's life, don't remember a thing you don't tell them yourself. An interest or palette or sensibility that defined them no longer existed, never existed.

But he could untangle that later. He had to see how far Kronos was willing to kiss his ass before innuendos turned into demands.

"Why jackdaw?" He asked, triumphantly, because Kronos was a hairs-width away from taking a bite from his fork. He set it down without so much as a suggestion of annoyance on his face, which in turn incensed Levi twice over, once for the look of it, and twice for the indignity at his plan backfiring on step one.

Levi interrupted his explanation of the mechanics of building the trigger – something he'd already learned from Egret – and still Kronos only nodded in understanding.

But Levi was growing sincerely curious. Maybe there was no harm in saving the baiting for later. "Egret blabbed that it has to be something that means a hell of a lot to your counterpart for it to work," Levi said.

"That's right."

"What's the connection, then?"

"He never told me."

Levi rolled his eyes. 

Kronos smiled wryly. "I know. Not entirely convincing. But I..." And he paused then, eyes lidding in thought. "I think everyone is allowed their secrets."

"You  _would_  think that," Levi said.

Kronos only smiled indulgently, a little sheepishly, lips curving, lashes latticed over glacial eyes. Levi looked away. It was so easy to pretend. It was getting too easy. He couldn't do this for long. “I'm not doing the best job of convincing you, am I?”

Maybe not, but what he truly excelled at was disarming Levi's lines before he could say them himself.

“Fine,” Levi said. “Next question.”

Kronos waited patiently. They ate in his study, where Levi had first woken up. It was private, but not isolated. Public, but not suffocating. Both doors to the study were cracked open or ajar, and Levi had not even thought to move the chair Kronos had set for him. It had already been situated in such a way that his back was to neither door nor to Kronos. The man himself sat behind his desk with his back to the wall, effectively trapping himself.

Erwin had done the same for him in the Ring.

Levi abandoned the thought. He watched Kronos carefully. “Where's Mike and Hange? Nanaba?”

His face didn't fall. It was worse. His brows and his eyes and the corners of his mouth stayed precisely as they were, and yet something in him had been snuffed out.

Levi had never seen that expression on Erwin before. It froze his blood. No one could fake that.

“Nevermind-” he muttered.

“No,” Kronos said softly. “I vowed to be forthcoming. Besides which, you- you deserve to know.”

A lab incident. Years ago. The sisters couldn't get a bead on Kronos, so they took away everyone else. His head researcher. His chief of security. His lieutenant commander.

“You would think it gets easier,” Kronos said. He leaned back in his chair, meal forgotten. “I've seen them die in every way you could imagine and then some. They passed in exactly this way at least a few hundred million times.” He grinned humorlessly. He wouldn't meet Levi's eye. “But you forget so easily. Funny, how the mind works. Even after seeing it so many times, so many that you even remember how the blood spatter will look when you find them, after a while, after a few...a few drinks or a few late nights and a good laugh or two and you start thinking it couldn't possibly happen again. And you can try not to love them as much or at all but...I think...” He looked down and drew his lip between his teeth, and he looked pained, and Levi's chest tightened.

“...some things are just constants. Death. Apathy. Suffering,” Kronos said. He looked up and Levi wished he wouldn't, because he couldn't look away and he looked and sounded and felt like Erwin and it was Erwin, his eyes and ears and heart screamed, it was Erwin. “Hope. Forgiveness. Love.”

Levi felt himself tip off the razor's edge. This was Erwin. No one could fake that.

He looked away. He couldn’t look at him when he asked this.

“You think spreading Titania will absolve you.”

“No. Nothing will ever absolve me of what I've done. What I've had to do- what I thought I had to do. I know good intentions aren't enough. I know how many bad men have had the best intentions. And maybe I am one of them. And if I am, I hope to God I'm stopped,” he said, and Levi looked up, because he was beginning to actively forget where he was and who he was speaking to because this, too, was Erwin, because every word was Erwin's. “But I believe in Titania. I believe humanity deserves more.”

Levi barely wanted to ask this either. “You would force it on us.”

“Force? In the sense that you would force a population to vaccinate, or force a person to put pressure on a wound. I wonder, Levi, why you don't object nearly as much to your governments' own wars. I learned your history. Your third world war's long since started. It never had a beginning. And it'll never have an end. You went on your global survey. Surely you avoided certain territories.”

Levi said nothing. He was right. They had avoided plenty of territory. Levi had thought nothing of it at the time. Of course they had to avoid it. Their resources had already been stretched thin. Intermipol was breathing down their necks. There was nothing they could have done. Maybe if Levi thought it hard enough, he would believe it.

“Meanwhile,” Kronos said, “you and billions of others beg for mercy from parasites like Intermipol and Iaso. Eleven billion souls at the mercy of a group small enough to fit comfortably on a cruise liner because they were born into wealth. Because they were born lucky.”

“Well, we got rid of one of those parasites.”

“And it took forty years. How many more until Iaso joins it? How many will die between then and now? How long before another Iaso takes its place?”

“I don't know,” Levi snapped. He couldn't keep pretending. He couldn't keep ignoring it.

Titania would destroy Iaso Industries in a day. It and others like it would never be able to squeeze the impoverished and the hungry and the sick ever again. With Titania, there will never be another Iaso again.

Kronos didn't push. He moved instead into filling any remaining gaps in Levi's understanding of the sisters.

Maria. Rose. Sina. Agriculture. Technology. Pharmaceuticals. Modern day corporate royalty. The daughters of a system groaning under the weight of its own incestuous corruption.

“I adore them,” Kronos said.

Levi blinked. “What?”

“Maria is a joy to hear. If there's an instrument she can't bring you to tears with, I don't know it. Her work with nonprofits is unparalleled. Rose funds every major expo on the continent. Technological advancement has never accelerated like it has with her influence. And Sina...the woman discovers treatments with the casual frequency of children collecting stamps.”

Levi went on blinking. He played the words back in his head, and then a second time. “This is...the same Maria, Rose, and Sina who've been busting your ass…right?”

“Of course. They're very fine women. In any other time, any other place, we might even be friends.”

Levi shut his eyes for a moment. “ _What?_ ”

Kronos smiled fondly. “I tell you this because they're wrong. They benefit from systems of government and commerce that have never seen rot like there exists in them now. But they're not evil.”

“Okay,” Levi said, face pulled tight in disbelief. “So, um, that whole bounty thing. Oh, and the assassins. With the killing. And the shooting.” Levi finger gunned. “Is that not evil or does that word mean something else over here?”

“It's just business to them. These systems are soulless. They encourage them to objectify their opponents to justify slaying them. To them, Titania is a bullet. To them, I'm just a gun.”

“And I'm the Queen of England.”

“Not quite,” Kronos teased. “But that is how they justify it to themselves. That's how they can sleep at night. And I don't blame them-”

“For the attempted murder? The successful murders? Come on, old man, I can't keep up.”

“It's hardly any different from your own former Intermipol.”

“You’re not helping your point. Intermipol was shit through and through.”

“You know that isn’t true. How large was it, Levi? How many people did it employ, most of whom took no part in making the kinds of decisions made by a scant dozen of the top brass, who themselves justified their actions thinking it was simply how the game was played?More importantly, how many lowly clerks and managers and security guards and so on were affected by the fall, most of whom worked for various arms that had nothing to do with titans or radicals or even reintegration?”

Everyone from paper pushers to junior programmers to corporate spies. Millions. Levi thought of Nile. A steaming asshole, sure. Not evil.

Levi knew the answer to his question, and Kronos offered him the undeserved kindness of not forcing him to voice it. But he may as well admit it to himself.

They were collateral.

"How many people are on the streets right now because of the film, Levi? Because of your Erwin's-"

"We did what was right. You didn't see reintegration, the lobbying, the power grab at the Corps, the propaganda, the  bribes, the lying. You didn't see it with your own eyes."

Kronos hummed. "Wouldn't you say that doing _what was right_ created a bit of an upheaval? That you were prepared for things to get worse before they got better?"

He didn't need to spell it out. They were both in the business of ripping off bandages. They argued about little more than size.

"How would you switch, anyway?" Levi pivoted. "Erwin doesn't dream of this place."

Kronos answered immediately, not bothered in the least by the change. “A bounce switch. It requires calibrating two universes simultaneously – think of it as a layover. Essentially, there isn't only a lock between this universe and yours, but the one Erwin dreams of, too. There's a Pond in the universe Erwin is wedded to. Within the walls, in a basement.”

“A three-way lock...”

Kronos nodded. He would even allow Levi to switch as many as a hundred of his people, people he trusted, to this side for insurance. If Erwin gave his express permission to switch, he vowed even to release the Pond's coordinates on Core before switching a single soul. Anyone who wanted to observe could attend. They could make a day of it.

Levi stopped short of asking if they were allowed to bring picnic baskets.

Kronos became pensive. "The sisters are at my door. It's quiet now, but it always is when they prepare. Every day, their sleeper agents inch closer. Any day, any moment, and you could find me with a bullet in my head.”

“You survived this long, mote of dust. You expect me to-”

“I never stayed in one place this long. I would have left years ago.”

“You didn't.”

“I didn't.”

“Because of Core.”

“Because of Core.”

“You know, I thought this whole multiverse domination thing was kinda farfetched, but you just-”

“Domination?” Kronos grinned. “Does it look like I'm dominating this universe? In any sense of the word? Before you answer," he teased, "this universe does not begin and end with this tower.”

Levi rolled his eyes at that, but he had him there. But not for long.

“We had you pinned all this time," Levi said. "Off by a detail or two, but we were right. You do hop worlds spreading titans.” He smiled disingenuously. “Survey's got a name for that kinda hobby, Kronos."

Kronos flinched at the name, a small twitch in the brow, nearly imperceptible had Levi not been watching him as carefully as he had. It hadn't occur to Levi that it could sincerely bother him. Or maybe he was unused to it. 

Everyone else in the tower called him Erwin Smith. Everyone else knew him as Erwin Smith. To everyone else, he was Erwin Smith. Even to Levi, he was almost Erwin Smith.

The silence was heavy then, the first time Levi remembered it being uncomfortable. 

“I don’t like it either,” Kronos finally said. “Somewhere out there is a perfect universe where I hadn't dropped the bomb, where we could have done all this neatly and peacefully. Look me in the eye, Levi, and imagine your Erwin in my place, with my resources, and with a thing like Titania at his disposal, and tell me honestly, tell me with all the conviction in your soul that he wouldn't have done everything in his power to do the same. To give everyone a chance.”

Levi couldn't answer him. Not from lack of knowing. He knew the answer.

And Kronos didn't press, because he didn't have to. Because Kronos knew, too.

It had grown late. Kronos walked him to his quarters and answered his questions with a hand at the small of his burning back.

 

*

 

Dragunov was already seated beyond the glass partition when Erwin arrived. He straightened when he saw Erwin, his hand darting to rest on the phone receiver as Erwin took his seat. Eager.

Erwin picked up his own receiver, and only then cared to look at him fully. He'd never seen eyes so sunken or a face drawn so tight, taut with a breed of tension that made Erwin wonder about the strength of that glass barrier.

Dragunov picked up his own and opened and shut his mouth for a moment. His chest rose harshly. He looked nowhere but at Erwin.

There were no windows. The only signs of life were them and the pair of guards at Dragunov's back. No sound but the distant humming heart of a generator beyond the walls. There was no other sound. No other sight but the glass and the old, plastic phones and a spy watching him through the eyes of a man he might have loved.

"Hey," Dragunov finally said, and Erwin's chest seized at the smallness of his voice, at the tentative drag of it in his ears and down his spine.

Dragunov knew. He must have known what that would do to Erwin.  

Erwin barely strangled the impulse to look away. "In this business," Erwin said, "this meeting might be called a honey trap."

Dragunov didn't look away either. "They told me," he said, ignoring him. "About the bombs."

Erwin maintained exquisite control over which information Dragunov was exposed to and which he was not. He was informed about the bombs. He was informed of who dropped them. He was not informed of who had catalyzed the radical incursion.

“Yes,” Erwin said. “You did.”

Dragunov swallowed thickly. “Look. He wanted me here to come clean on his behalf. You of all people should know better than to take shit on its face. Everything he's said and done, everything I’ve seen him do, everything he says, I understand it. I've seen every bit of it corroborated. Ibelievein him. But I can't parse these fucking bombs.”

“How so?”

“We agreed. No violence. Not like that.”

“Not like that,” Erwin repeated unkindly. “How selective.”

Dragunov's face shifted a fraction.

“Glass houses,” he shot back.

Dragunov was many things, but he wasn't an idiot. He knew what little news he received was tailored for his eyes.

That same flare returned to his chest, a firecracker in his ribs that threatened to sharpen his tongue. Erwin wasn't about to harass their most valuable asset. He removed the receiver from his ear and reached to set it down.

“No. Wait.” Dragunov began to rise from his chair. The guards moved forward.

Erwin motioned for them to return to their posts. He waited a moment longer for the flush of anger to recede before picking up the receiver again.

“I'm no good to anyone down here,” Dragunov said. “Let me help you.”

Erwin might have laughed if he had the patience.

Dragunov searched his face. He exhaled sharply. Apparently, he hadn't found what he was looking for.

“Look,” he said, lowering his voice. “I'm not stupid. I know he controls everything I see, everything I hear, even when he swears up and down that he doesn't or that he doesn't notice himself doing it or whatever.He's good. He's been doing this a long time. He knows what you say before you say it. Knows how to make you say what he wants and make you think you came up with it all on your own, knows how to make you want something and think it was all your idea. But you know that. You know that better than anyone.”

Erwin listened, unconvinced to the bone.

Dragunov went on. “I wanna know your end. I believe in him. I believe in Titania, in everything he stands for – everything he says he stands for. But I'm not a blind dog, Erwin, and he knows that, and I think you know that, too, I think you know it because Levi wasn't one either-”

_Wasn't._

He went on, but Erwin only listened with half an ear. Dragunov worked with Kronos for years. He would say anything to get his way. If what he said of him was halfway true, then he learned from the best. It wasn't too outlandish an idea, Erwin thought, that Dragunov would put on a show and then deliver every atom of intel he was offered straight to Kronos' ear. What incensed Erwin most was how bald the attempt was, how amateurish.

But the slip-up was too much.

“Tell me one thing, Dragunov.”

“My name isn't-”

“You didn't answer Mike when he asked you if there existed a method by which Kronos could switch Levi back.”

Dragunov waited. There was no change in him, but Erwin didn't need to see it.

Erwin looked him in the eye. “There is no method, is there.”

“There is.”

“Then describe it like you described the tissue preservation.”

“Fine. It's a bounce switch. A three-way calibr-”

“And you've seen it performed before?”

“Not firsthand, but I've heard-”

“And on a person who's been switched for as long as you, Dragunov, and Levi?”

“I _am_ Levi-”

“A person around whom a transuniversalmembranous callous has grown so dense that he could never dream or switch again?“

Dragunov looked down, eyes darting in thought, brows drawing together. For the first time, Dragunov looked palpably uncertain. “I didn't...I know it's been bypassed before, but-”

“You're not sure.”

Dragunov opened and shut his mouth. He raked his hands through his hair.

Erwin wanted the meeting to end.

“That's not good enough.”

“Give me a chance,” Dragunov said as Erwin began to move his receiver again. “When Egret handled me like dirt, you talked to me on that rooftop like I was someone. I'm still that someone, Erwin, and yeah, I happened to be in his head when you gave him that little speech about letting yourself ask for help.”

Erwin's grip on the receiver tightened.

“So I'm asking for help, Erwin."

So these were the depths to which Kronos was willing to stoop to deceive him, all of them.

That wasn't even the worst of it. Erwin wanted to believe him. Wanted to with all his soul. All but the fraying edges of his self-control screamed at him to let him go. To give him a chance. To be merciful. To forgive. He remembered the man on the rooftop, the man he knew not to be the Levi he knew but deserving of respect all the same.

“He had a blade to your throat,” Dragunov said feverishly. “I saw that, too. I saw every version of that, Erwin, I bet as many times as he saw me kill the man you call Kronos.”

But this wasn't Levi. And this wasn't a stranger to him anymore. This was the right hand man to the most immediate existential threat humanity has ever seen.

“The mud, the rain. I saw it. I saw all of it. You gave him a second chance.”

To survive titans, to survive Intermipol, reintegration, all to be fooled by a fly he had already caught.

“I gave Levi a second chance,” Erwin said, placed the receiver back in the cradle, stood, and turned to go.

Behind him came a sharp thud and a shout ringing even through the glass.

"I _AM_ LEVI!"

Erwin turned as the guards threw Dragunov to the ground. The top layer of the reinforced glass had crackled with the force with which he had brought his fists against it.

Erwin left. He did not look back. He shouldn't have let himself be talked into this. He would sooner leave the Survey Corps than see him ever again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	23. Someone Borrowed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [Woodkid - Land of All](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaADPWRoaDE&ab_channel=WOODKID)  
> 

  
“I'm gonna leave the tower,” Levi said.

Kronos looked up. His pen froze where it had flown a moment ago across documents and reports and whatever else covered his study desk.

“Okay.”

Levi stared. “Okay?”

Kronos had already returned his attention to the papers.

Levi crossed his arms. “You're not worried.”

“Of course I am.”

Levi caught on. “So. How many spooks you sending to follow me? Two dozen? Three?”

Kronos penned another line before looking up. “Enough to make sure you don't come back in pieces."

"You assume I'll come back."

Even as he said it, Levi knew how unconvincing he must sound. Of course he'd come back. The Pond was here. And even if he miraculously met an agent of the sisters and sang like the proverbial canary, he doubted severely that they would extend an invitation for Levi to use their own Pond.

Kronos didn't even answer. The knowing gleam in his eyes said enough.

When Levi turned to leave, however, Kronos spoke. "I don't mean to offend. Only to state things as they are. You don't know this world," he said, and Levi turned back. "You don't yet know its politics or its people or even its languages. This tower isn't a microcosm of an English speaking city building by accident."

Levi looked him up and down. "You don't want me to leave."

“I sincerely doubt the princess in the high tower routine would work on you-”

“Answer the question.”

Kronos watched him thoughtfully. “No.”

Levi came to the desk, rounded it. “And you'd let me leave anyway.”

“You misunderstand, Levi. It's not you I'm worried for,” he said. A blonde strand slipped out of the sweep of his hair and brushed past the amused arch of his brow. “I only hope any RMS agents you come across aren't especially stupid today.”

Levi left the study. He left the tower.

Kronos was wrong about one thing. Levi knew this world. He knew its politics. He knew its people, even its languages. He hadn't spoken them in close to fifteen years and locked away them and everything else that belonged to this world in the back of his mind in a room marked  _B_ _rain Trauma Ramblings_ , but the door was unlocked. It was opening. It opened wider with every step he took, every breath he stole. It was starting to become difficult to separate his memories from Dragunov's.

A cool wind lashed at him when he stepped outside. In the distance, a window flickered, once. Twice.

  


*

  


Mike came to him in the morning. Earlier, he had said to Erwin that he was bringing someone along. Erwin assumed it was Hange. He assumed wrong.

Erwin hadn't heard from Farlan since before his own – final – meeting with Dragunov the previous evening.

Mike pulled up a chair. Erwin sank slowly into an armchair, doing his best to not look like he was calculating his every movement so as to not upset his volatile gut.

Farlan remained standing. “I spoke to Levi this morning,” he said.

Erwin shot a pointed glare Mike's way. He'd made it more than clear after last night's incident that letting Dragunov influence their agents was by far the most preventable yet effective method of sabotage at Kronos' disposal. Mike had seen the twin points of contact on the near-shattered glass barrier and agreed. Something must have transpired between then and now to change his mind.

Mike didn't meet his eye. “Hear him out, Erwin.”

Nothing Farlan said next was news to Erwin. He went on about Dragunov's innocence and spun some yarn about endearing themselves to him enough to turn him and, if possible, to send back a double agent. Erwin couldn't believe Mike was making him listen to this fantasy. Farlan could well be parroting Dragunov word for word.

“Now that Egret's cover is blown,” Farlan went on, “the sisters don't have an insider anywhere near her rank. Without intel, they'll get nervous, send more thugs and complicate our talks even more. We-”

Erwin couldn't take it anymore. "Complicate them more than they already have?" he asked. "By, may I remind you, abducting one of our own?"

"The lock between our sides can't hold out while we-”

“I'm aware of those claims.”

“He swears by Titania, but he's...the bombs….” Farlan went on, voice rising, “with all he's learned from us, he's not sure what to believe anymore." He turned fully, beseechingly, to Erwin. "We have an opportunity, here. We could turn him.  If there's a way to switch him again, if we're still unsure about Kronos, we could be sending back a double agent who-”

“Or someone who knows our most intimate secrets.”

"We don't have another choice-"

"We have plenty."

"We're wasting time-”

“By not rushing into something we do not understand.”

“What, like you do?”

Mike perked up.

“Yes,” Erwin said easily. “And I wonder why you're trying so desperately to replicate my mistakes than to learn from them.”

Farlan ran his hands through his hair. He ditched the charm and said lowly, "We can't just leave him down there."

"We can and we will, and you know exactly why."

Farlan's voice rose. “He can help-”

“He's done enough.”

"He has rights."

"He's an enemy ag-”

“He's my brother,” Farlan snapped.

Mike rubbed his temples. Erwin wasn't as quick to respond this time.

“Yeah," Farlan said, watching the two of them in turn. "No one bothered to mention this little detail so I put some things together myself.”

Erwin turned to Mike. “No one else was allowed-”

“I'm a career fucking hacker, Smith, give me a little credit. But yeah, I know. Through this bizarro switch thing that's somehow completely normal now to all of you, with the way you all talk about it like its a drive through Queens – but yeah, I know now. I know this isn't the first time they switched, too. I know the Levi from this world and the one from the other were switched before, fifteen years before."

“Farlan-” Mike started.

“You know the best part?" Farlan sneered, his eye unmoving from Erwin. "The punchline? You know what fucking kills me? I've always known. I knew something was off when he recovered from the accident. I knew it couldn't have been brain trauma. He hadn't been relearning how to speak English and Russian, he'd been learning it for the first time. Spoke gibberish for weeks before he learned it, fast as he could, except it was never really gibberish, was it? And he had to learn everything else for the first time, too. He had no idea what was going on, either. Started drinking. He thought he was going crazy. He had no fucking clue."

Mike straightened. “That's enough-”

“Is it? Don't you want to know why those trigger words work? Yeah, I know all about those too, no thanks to either of you. Don't you wanna know why  _I'm_   _the jackdaw_  would send him back, why it's a contradiction so disturbing to one Levi and not the other that it disrupts fucking time and space?”

Mike raised his face from his hands. Erwin said nothing.

“It came from a fucking lullaby,” Farlan laughed bitterly. “He'd read this book of em to Isabel, way, way before the crash, when she was a kid. It was her favorite line. Knocked her right out, that verse, almost hypnotic. I'm the jackdaw. I'm the jackdaw. I'm the fucking jackdaw.”

“And this second Levi,” he said, blinking rapidly, “the Levi who switched with him in that hospital bed, of course he had no idea. If it were our Levi, he'd have recognized it in a second. Course he didn’t know why that worked, 'cause he must've never read that to her, or read her some other story. The man who saved Isabel, the man who took her in, took me in, who mourned us, thought we were fucking dead all this time, he's in a fucking cell because some fucked up version of you,” he snarled, pointing at Erwin, “made a lap dog out of him. Like you made one out of this Levi, and look where _he_ is now."

Mike rose. "Farlan-"

"And now you're, what," Farlan barreled on, "you're now  _punishing_  him for following orders?  _Your_  orders?”

“Kronos isn't-” Erwin started.

“ _You're one and the fucking same_.”

Mike rose. “Enough,” he said to Farlan, who shoved past him and left the safe house.

The slamming door rang in his ears. Erwin couldn't bring himself to move.

Mike sighed. “He didn't mean-”

“He did,” Erwin said. “And he was right.”

Mike sank into his chair. The air was stiff between them.

After a few moments of it, Mike spoke. “What if we're going about this all wrong, Erwin? What if we don't know Kronos the way we think we do? Made him out to be this boogeyman and now that we see more of him, see that he's nothing like what we imagined, we try to pigeonhole him into our idea of what we think he  _should_  be-”

“He dropped nuclear bombs on American military bases-”

“After you leaked intel to radicals-”

“Because they were infiltrated by Kronos' men-” 

"Who, for all we know, were doing exactly as Kronos said and meant no harm-"

"Would that be before or after releasing a virus that turns humans into beasts?"

Mike didn't answer. Whether he didn't know what to say to that or knew exactly and wouldn't voice it, Erwin couldn't say.

Erwin couldn't sleep that night, or the one after. Maybe Mike was right. Maybe they had been going about this all wrong. Not reacting fast enough. Not doing enough. Maybe Erwin was holding them back.

Quietly, he'd made peace with the possibility that Kronos may not be a virus after all, might not be some villainous malady. Mankind seldom needed an external force to destroy one another. It managed well enough on its own. Kronos wasn't possessing an instance of Erwin. He wasn't forcing him to bow to his will. He was Erwin. And Erwin, plus or minus several millenia - was Kronos.

He also couldn't ignore the possibility that his paranoia, however well-earned, was not entirely selfless. Keeping Kronos at arm's length meant keeping away not only Kronos but the idea of him. Conceiving that an instance of himself was the reason titans pervaded not just this world but every world across the multiverse was a herculean effort even in the abstract. Kronos was everything he was looking for all his life. Kronos was everything he vowed to destroy all his life.

The thought of contacting this elaborate thought experiment any more than they have, of acknowledging its reality, its complexity, its – and he was sickened by the thought – humanity, demanded a character and strength of will that Erwin increasingly doubted he possessed anymore, nor truly ever had.

He couldn't entertain more than a thought or two without knee-buckling migraines. He couldn't write or speak without interruption from his cloying gut. He snapped at the people who least deserved it. 

And the Sunbelt incursion. He'd assured himself that he would have never even thought to leak the bases' titan holding capabilities to radicals if he'd had the barest doubt.

And he'd been right. How he hated with all his soul that he'd been right. That he had been essentially vindicated for using radicals, for doing the very same he accused of Intermipol. Intent mattered, sure. But by how much, Erwin couldn't know.

Even Kronos hadn't used radicals. 

Erwin wondered if he even deserved to have as much influence on the Kronos operation as he did.

Or maybe this very line of thought was Kronos' intent.  To sow doubt and then to step away and let each of them wear out themselves and one another just in time for Kronos' arrival. 

Erwin rested his head against the cool bathroom tile. He knew the sheen of it by now, knew every chip and crack of it by heart. 

It was a dull thing to wait there for the pains to pass. He'd taken to having a notebook on hand. It started as a place to organize his thoughts about a recent testimony or potential lead on Jones or Egret. But he found himself in there so often as the days passed, clutching his middle and shuddering to his knees, that soon, even clarity of mind was lost to him.

So when he flipped through, he barely recalled scratching those feverish, wandering lines that stroked the profile of a nose or the curve of a chin, and he told himself it was nothing, no one, in particular, and maybe this corporeal civil war bled him of patience with himself, too, because he could stomach that line about as well as his lunch. It was Levi. Of course it was Levi.

He drew the rest of him from memory. He drew his eyes again and again. He couldn't get them right. He was already forgetting. He couldn't remember what they looked like untainted by Dragunov.

It was becoming difficult to separate the two. He had to separate the two.

Waiting for the worst of the nausea to ebb, he drew the books Levi had pulled aside in his apartment when they had first met. Later, he had found some of them to be missing, though they were few that he referenced often, so it had taken him the longest time to remember which he must have taken. They had been historical, broadly so.

Erwin wondered, then, against the tiled wall, if Levi had still been learning this world then, in that apartment, even after fifteen years. If there was so much he still missed that he could have lived to the end of his days without recovering it all. If his affinity for city parks and Hange's gardens had been a way to clutch onto what little hadn't changed. Erwin didn't know Kronos' universe, the one Levi had been born into, the one he had been stolen from. But he wagered that a tree here was a tree there. A tulip here was a tulip there. He wagered it wasn't a bad idea to find something familiar in a sea of violent strangeness and hold onto it for dear life.

He didn't notice, either, when his lines wandered still more, when stray lines were not so stray when they lashed across his chest and over his shoulders, when stray lines became straps and buckles. 

He didn't know what to think of it that he drew the Levi from the walls more faithfully than the Levi he knew – had known, he corrected himself - in the flesh.  

They'd all pulled Levi out to Lily's for the first time sometime in the fall, just days before leaving for the global survey. Levi had ordered something so thoroughly laced with mint that the scent of it announced his approach more faithfully than any sound for days. Mike must have been able to pinpoint him for miles around.

When they had stayed overnight in Mexico City, Erwin dreamed of distant walls and off-hour strolls. He'd watched as Levi, never without his harness even on leave, made a half-hearted show of shooing away street urchins with dirty feet and dirtier faces before grumbling for Erwin to stay put. He'd ducked into a bakery and came out sans three weeks' pay before handing out the fresh bread and stalking away before his face was recognized. 

In Johannesburg, Erwin dreamed of Levi, too. He was planting a garden. Erwin would not have known anything to be wrong had there not been a strange shape in the distance, jagged and green with overgrowth. They were walls. Crumbling, dilapidated walls. And when he looked through the eyes of that Erwin, the commander within – now without – the walls, he saw a Levi so at peace that Erwin's chest tightened, then, in the South African heat, and now, chilled against the smooth tile. 

He didn't realize it, hadn't thought to put it together until now, but he had started dreaming nearly as soon as Levi came into their lives.  He'd seen one Levi about as often as the other. The one, in the day, and the other, at night.

He missed Levi. He missed them both.

  


*

  


Walking down a street, any street, was an exercise in patience. Each street sign, each address and digit and name was wholly foreign and unreadable and yet so viscerally familiar that simply looking at them felt like harboring a thrashing sparrow in his chest that couldn't quite burst out of him. Eventually, it didn't matter. He just followed the moon.

He couldn't see Kronos' agents. He used all his best tricks to lose them, and though he caught no sight of them before or after, he doubted a single one of them worked. He didn't know this place like they did. The city was a mirror image of New York City in a mirror cracked and warped and filthy, a city cut up and scrambled and drowned and resurrected and the people looked like people and a blade of grass there was a blade of grass here but that was all. That was all he knew.

The tower, a labyrinthine monolith from the inside, was nearly indistinguishable from any other from the outside, appearing not only unremarkable but almost demure. That too, was a show. Levi squeezed from the tower's agents that there was more to Kronos' domain than the tower alone. Like a fortress, it was the epicenter of the quarter of the city in which every eye was an eye for Kronos, in which no hair stirred without Erwin knowing. 

Kronos. He'd meant Kronos. He walked faster, pulled his hood closer. Not that it mattered. He wasn't even safe in his own head.

He knew he had reached the outer limits of Kronos' territory when traveling farther was met with a bevy of sudden inconveniences. A gas leak here. A film crew there. Levi's opinion of his chasers was greatly diminished if they thought this parade of misfortunes would actually deter him from passing through.

He ducked away from every wandering eye. He needed to reach the outer limits. He needed to see for himself what it was that frightened Kronos so fiercely that he stayed entrenched in his high tower. He needed to see the sisters, in one form or another.

Levi must have lost Kronos' agents after all. After slipping past the camera crew after just barely avoiding a producer with a sharp ear, he passed into a part of the city one of the Titania patients had taken to calling No Man's Land for its pretense at neutrality. It looked no different from the streets he had just left. It alone separated Kronos' territory from that of the sisters. Allegedly. Levi marched straight through it to the other side.

Few were out at this time of night. Levi kept walking. He slipped from the shadow of an overpass and into one cast by a late-night diner and then on into another. Before he knew it, the slosh and pull of river water met his ears. His legs carried him forward as if by their own volition. But this wasn't another of Dragunov's reflexes. This one wasn't deja vu.

The pier was sparsely lit. The stream coiled like a living, breathing thing. 

They could never get Erwin away from the water. Fair odds that in any city they visited on the global survey, and in any village they stopped at, Erwin would be found working or walking or simply being by lakes, by rivers, by oceans. He didn't talk about his dreams often. He never said why he looked at waters as if they were something he never thought he could have, never thought he could ever see. Levi had never dreamed of Kronos by the shore. This wasn't deja vu. This wasn't one of Dragunov's associations. This was his own. 

The black waters licked at the pier's spindly legs, gushed over metal and stone. He'd married the memory of Erwin to the sound of waves.

Levi walked along the pier.

Finally, he picked up on someone tailing him.

Levi kept walking, pace unbroken, unchanged. His hands swung loose at his sides, open, visibly unarmed. He slipped into an alleyway, clambered up a fire escape, and waited. His pursuer committed their second mistake since allowing Levi to hear him, and walked inside. 

Levi dropped down. Slipped the knife out of his boot.

His pursuer raised his hands in surrender."Mister Levi, it's me. Please-"

Levi whirled him around. It was one of the patients.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Levi whispered.

"You shouldn't be here, Mister. I know you ain't from here so you-"

"I know exactly where I am, kid, and where I'm going. Beat it." Levi moved away. 

The young man grabbed Levi's sleeve. "Please, the remote bioscanners already caught you-"

Levi scoffed. "How much did he pay you for this performance, kid? Just tell him you delivered the script and pick up your check."

"Please, you have to listen-"

"And what about you?" Levi rounded on him. "Any reason they can't pick up your fancy blood with their scanners?" 

The boy's mouth fluttered open and shut. Amateurish. The whole operation was a farce. There were no sisters, no imaginary oppressors past the delusional glass of that tower. He doubted even Titania by proxy, despite all his earlier doubts. How disappointing. Kronos almost had him. It wasn't like him to be so sloppy. 

"My name isn't Eric," the boy said as Levi turned and walked away. "It's Franklin Trost."

Levi's steps slowed. The name was familiar. He turned around. "You - I mean, your counterpart. He was one of the first thirteen."

"Yes, sir. But," he said uncertainly, "that's not why I told you."

Levi waited, then motioned impatiently for the kid to go on when he said nothing more.

Realization dawned on his face. "Oh. You don't know."

Levi was definitely being watched now. They weren't even making a secret of it anymore. 

"Kid, quit-"

"I'm her son," he said. "I'm Rose's son. They can't touch me."

  


*

  


Erwin's vision blackened. Someone convened the meeting, he didn't know who. When he came to in his armchair, he strained to draw breath. Mike lounged across the couch, hands behind his head and two cups of tea between them. 

Erwin looked around. Moving his head was a herculean effort. "Where is everyone?"

"Early day," Mike said. 

Erwin reached for memories that returned sluggishly, as if rising from a tepid mire. "I passed out again."

Mike said nothing.

Erwin started to rise.

"Don't," Mike said.

He ignored him. Mike rose on one elbow and moved one foot off the couch. Erwin had just enough time to feel indignant at his lack of faith in Erwin's ability to merely stand before he let go of the armrest and buckled.

Mike was at his side as quickly as Erwin had ever thought capable of a human being. He didn't even have the strength to put up a fight as Mike moved him back into the armchair. Erwin settled for a glare.

Mike returned it. "You stopped eating."

Erwin huffed a quiet laugh.

"You've gotta eat, Erwin."

Erwin frowned. "I am."

Mike cocked his head. "Throwing away as many meals as you expect us to believe you eat isn't eating. I've gotta hand it to you, though. You even cook it before chucking the thing. You really go the full mile."

He'd been had. He must not have found all the cameras. Erwin shrugged and looked away. "Hardly any point if it just comes out the same end."

"Erwin, don't hide from us."

But he must. How could Mike not see it, not see why he must? Erwin bit his cheek to bleeding to keep his mouth shut. 

"And don't do that either." Mike knelt by him. "You think we expect you to be on your best behavior while the clock's ticking, expect you to smile and say please and thank you when your bucket's been thoroughly kicked _?_  You-you think we expect you to be superhuman-"

"I expect it," Erwin snapped. He clenched his hands over his thighs. “Of myself,” he added.

Mike's shoulders fell. "I know," he said. He propped his arms on the arm rests and his chin on his arms. "Say, how many clubs were you president of in uni?"

Erwin frowned, but Mike insisted. 

He shrugged. "Four or five," he mumbled.

Mike gave him a look.

"Are we counting-"

"Yes."

"Seven."

"Erwin."

"But they were the same-"

"The debate teams had separate charters."

Erwin threw up his hands. "Fine. Nine. So what?"

Mike snorted. "That doesn't spell it out?"

Erwin shrugged. Not really. 

Mike looked wistful. "More than half of them were for medical students."

Erwin bristled. "And I was, for the first two ye-"

"Yeah. I know. I was there, remember?" Mike grinned to himself. "Dorm bursting with those flashcards. Found 'em everywhere. Still picking one out of my socks every now and th-"

"Got it," Erwin said pointedly.

After two years, he knew himself well enough to know the field just didn't agreed with him. He was too confrontational for it, too restless. He never possessed the endurance for lab work, or the humility.

"You dropped premed, but you stayed in those clubs," Mike said. "Raised more for 'em than the school ever had.”

Erwin's good humor fell. Even in the murky fog in his head, he sensed it. "You're leading."

Mike scratched his nose. "Never could get one past you."

Erwin moved his head off the back of the armchair. He'd never felt such a rush from a few scant inches of movement. Mike pushed him back with a hand at his chest. 

"I know you never let it go," Mike said. "Soon as you joined Survey, you made a beeline for medical. Shadis nearly had to order you to let it go to make you his Security chief."

He didn't have to, in the end. Shadis just needed to triple R&D and Medical's budgets. Erwin insisted. It was done. 

"Hell," Mike went on, "you put your career on the line just to bust Hange. Taking in Levi wasn't even half the risk - you were already commander. But you did it anyway. You knew what Hange could do for the Survey Corps, for titan research. With the right tech, the right budget."

"Mike-"

"I'm getting there, I promise. All this...all this, and we're inching along, and we've made more progress than ever, faster than ever, but it just wasn't enough. Intermipol squeezed us. Budgets sank-"

Erwin's heart sank. It couldn't be. Mike couldn't be leading where Erwin thought he was.

"-but it's different now. I brought you the figures, Hange, too. I know you saw them. The tissue preservation method - Erwin, that's as holy grail as you get. We've discovered more about titans in the past week than we have in four decades. We might not even need the Threader. Erwin," he pleaded, "forget our kids, forget us,  _you_  could live to see a world without them. You could live to see your dream-" 

"You want to know why I'm not beside myself with joy."

Mike waited, watched him intently.

"You want to know why it doesn't matter to me anymore."

And still, Mike waited. Erwin scowled. 

"You think I envy Kronos."

Mike had the decency to look abashed. But he said nothing. No clarification. No denial. It was as clear a confirmation as any.

Erwin shook his head, hurt descending like a stone. "You think- you actually think I -" He squeezed his eyes shut.

"I think," he heard himself saying. "I do envy him."

Mike's sigh troubled the hair that fell into his face.

"But I," Erwin started. His breath caught in his throat. "I don't envy the path that lead him here. That led him to believe that the only way to Providence was to risk extinction. And to do it on behalf of people worlds apart who may not appreciate their lives being decided by a roll of the dice. Who have no choice, no say in their own destinies, their own paths."

"People had no say when we decided Intermipol was too corrupt-"

"It's not a good analogy and you know it, Mike. We were purging a corrupt-"

"And taking the world down with it. People are hurting because of what we've done-”

“They were hurting before-”

“-and we knew they would. You knew."

Erwin scowled. "To compare that to releasing titans-"

"To have enough tissue to synthesize a miracle cure?"

"Miracles don't come with conditions."

"Miracles don't come often, period." 

Erwin shook his head. "We're debating the logistics of miracles now. Never thought I'd need to remind ourselves that they happen to not exist."

"But Kronos does. You do."

Erwin looked away. He had to tell him. His voice was smaller than he intended. "You were right. I was holding onto the idea of him instead of understanding him as he is. He's not some virus. He's not possessed. He's a- he's a reflection I'm not very fond of.”

Carefully, Mike said, "You think he's-"

"I know. Everything he's done. Everything he's said. The way it was done. The way it was said. I would have done the same, said the same. I didn't want to see it. I blinded myself.” He laughed harshly. “I'm Kronos."

Mike didn't speak for a moment. Erwin could tell he wanted to reassure him, to tell him he was wrong, that he was mistaken. But he knew Erwin broached no empty promises, no pitying reassurance. This was their new reality.

"You know, that makes it even harder to dismiss him, to pass him off as some monster,” Mike said. “I know you. I know you'd never go this far or this long unless you believed in something."

"Not all good intentions make good men."

"But you're a good man, Erwin."

Erwin looked at Mike. "Am I?"

*

  


Levi's stomach sank through to the ground. He couldn't stay here.

Shots hissed by. Whether they were tranqs or silenced bullets, Levi didn't stick around to examine. He raced out of the alleyway and looked back precisely once, enough to see his pursuers wholly ignoring the boy shouting after him to move it.

He wound his way back into Kronos' territory and hunted for more populated streets to slip into. Slinking through basements and narrow allies was out of the question. He didn't know these streets. He came to get answers, not to get caught. A crowd was a far better cover.

Just as he began to wonder if they could be Kronos' agents putting on a show, his vision whitened from a sharp pain in his shoulder. He stumbled once before barreling with renewed fervor out of sight. Maybe not.

Scuffles broke out behind him the closer he came to the tower. Then, more shots. Kronos' agents stationed in the streets must have engaged with Levi's pursuers. There was no mistaking them now. 

He chanced a hard stop in the shadow of an awning to catch his breath. The hand he used to pressure the bullet wound was slick with blood. It gushed with every clamor of his heart. His front was soaked. His lungs screamed.

"Hey."

Levi lashed out blindly. He stopped just in time, just registering the sight of two hands raised in surrender. A civilian. 

He started to move. "Beat it-"

She grabbed his arm and threw off her cap in about the time it took him to wonder why everyone in this universe seemed so much handsier than his own. He pulled away as she lowered her scarf from her face. He stilled.

"Beckert."

Beckert – rather, her counterpart - was wholly unimpressed with his gaping. "You want information."

Levi's chest rose and fell sharply. He was losing too much blood. "Information's not free."

She shrugged and gave him a once-over. "I'm making a donation."

Beckert slapped her cap back on her head, raised her scarf, cocked her head down the street, and took off. Levi took a step forward before catching sight of the tower, not five blocks away. Beckert headed opposite. Sirens wailed as the firefights ebbed.

He'd gotten what he needed. More than enough. Kronos and his agents were being targeted after all. The Trost kid, too, was an unexpected question. Kronos was privately treating the child of his public adversaries. Levi may have been fooled by the false name, but he would sooner believe that the sun revolved around the earth than the idea that Kronos hadn't known it either. 

And after all, this was Egret's girl. Tailing her could lead him into the arms of the people he had just escaped. 

But it didn't feel that way. It was too brazen. Too forward. She had looked like she hardly cared what he decided one way or the other.

Beckert had fooled Erwin and Mike for three years. There was no telling what her counterpart was capable of.

He moved. The adrenaline was dropping. Pain flooded back and washed out his vision again. 

He rounded a corner and saw her slip into a shuttered building. A window flickered. Once. Twice. He'd seen this place before.

He followed her inside and rose three floors before needing to stop, to kneel and watch his blood pass through the cracks in the stone and to will the pain away.

"Getting old, here," he heard from a floor or two above. He gritted his teeth through the last steps until finally, he found Beckert in a far room off a crumbling hallway. He just barely caught the medkit flying at his face.

Levi chose a spot with clear sight lines and sat with his back against the wall to fix his mess of a shoulder. He glanced Beckert's way every so often as she cleared adjacent rooms. Satisfied that they were alone, she returned and sank into an old couch. 

“Fuckin' stupid," she muttered to herself. Made you go outside with RMS spooks up to our balls-the fuck was he trying to prove-”

"Didn't make me." He hissed as he dug the bullet out of his shoulder. "I wanted to."

She gave him a look. “Don't. He woulda kept you off the streets if he didn't want you crawlin' 'em. Dunno what he expected, that you'd scamper back to his open arms or something...”

A victorious flush lanced through him at the implication. “So it's true. He's engineering this whole show. It's all bullshit, isn't it? Titania, the sisters-"

She blinked. “No, man. Titania's real.”

He stopped and looked up in the middle of suturing the wound. "And the sisters?"

"Same. Riding his ass, all three."

Levi finished closing it with a stifled groan and looked around. “Doesn't look like resistance headquarters."

She snorted. "Little ol' me against The Big Three?"

"I meant Kronos."

She squinted.

He grit his teeth. "Erwin Smith," he clarified.

Her eyes shot up. "Dude. Smith  _is_ the resistance."

"Then why all this?" He gestured to the enclosure in between winding a roll of gauze across his shoulder. "Your counterpart worked for him for three years. If he's the resistance, why does it look an awful lot like you're hiding from  _him_?"

“Almost like the two don't gotta be mutually exclusive."

The stairs creaked. Someone was coming down. Beckert leaped off the couch and rocketed toward the door, but she was too late.

“STAY THERE-  _fuck_ -” She swore. 

The intruder peered in, took one look at Levi, and froze.

It was Nick Foley.

  


*

  


Teams reported gains on Egret, none on Jones. Testimonies from Kronos' agents continued to corroborate Dragunov. Not that it mattered. A single inconsistency among a sea of corroborations was all it would take to discredit him. It was only a matter of time.

Mike stayed behind after Nanaba disconnected from the next day's briefing and Hange bolted back to the labs. He'd brought lunch. Erwin tried not to feel too indignant about the gesture, though it was surprisingly easy given how little energy he could stand to spare at all. 

Erwin set down his fork. They had another potential lead all this time.

"Mike," he said. "The boy in your universe. Eren. He wrote Kronos in the sand. He was the first to give us that name. Did you ever find out.."

Mike shook his head. He leaned back where he sat opposite Erwin at the kitchen table.  "I wish. Spent more time trying not to say something that'd get me killed when I switched than anything else. But I did meet him. I think he dreamed."

Erwin's brows shot up. "What?"

"There's no other way he could've known about Kronos. I mean, I don't know...I checked out migration patterns of that time. Kind of a wild thing for a single Navajo kid to know one Greek name and no others. A name that just happens to mean a hell of a lot to us."

"Do you think the boy - his counterpart - exists here?  In Core?"

"No way to tell. Far as I can tell, it's a non-lead." He frowned, squinting at a memory. "But Erwin, the titans in that world, they were still people. Like they were infected recently. They were trouble, sure, but they weren't that far gone. I think..." Mike looked away. "If anyone could still be saved by the completed Titania, it'd be them."

Erwin's blood chilled. "What are you getting at?"

"Maybe he knows how Core connects to other universes," Mike said. "Hange and I wondered...they said Han's version of the Pond could do that. Remotely map which universes were paired, I mean. I don't see why Kronos couldn't do the same."

Erwin's chest tightened. “You're suggesting Kronos already released the viral Titania on all the worlds connected to ours.”

“Could be.”

“To blackmail us into bending faster."

"Blackmail, incentivize..."

Erwin thought aloud. "We'd be jeopardizing all these worlds he's taken hostage if we don't agree to the switch.”

“Wait. It's just a theory. That and Le-uh, Dragunov looked sincere when he said Kronos had no idea that Hange and I dreamed.”

“It might not even matter whether or not he knew. But if he has been preparing this in all those worlds and waiting for the right moment to spring it on us, paint us the monsters for not helping them..."

“Yeah. And it'd probably work.”

“Would it?”

Mike met his eye. "Would you abandon them?"

"We have no idea if Titania is even real."

"Say for a moment it is. Say Kronos goes to these lengths because he's right, and because he's sick of being run outta town when something like Titania could so easily end so much grief. Would we ditch all those worlds? Eleven billion, give or take, if what Han said about a universe per person was right.”

Erwin lowered his face into his hands. “My god...”

“Hell, even eleven hundred. Even eleven. Even one. What's the threshold? Where's the line? Would we sacrifice two worlds? Two dozen? When would it be too much?”

“You're saying you believe Kronos is still going to these lengths with good intentions?”

“Maybe. Doesn't mean I agree. It's like you said. No shortage of bad people with good intentions. I mean, just look at us and Intermipol-”

“Not this again-”

“For all the good we did, real, tangible, long term good, we screwed up a lot of lives. We started a depression, Erwin.”

“A depression doesn't scale up to mass transuniversal slaughter.”

“I don't know that it does either. But there's so few ways to wrap your head around this that this is the best comparison we have.”

“Doesn't make it a good one."

“I know. God, I know. Remember when we used to worry about things that didn't span universes?”

Erwin smiled wryly. “No.”

Hange came back around that evening. It was they who had planted the bug that caught Erwin's attempt at mitigating his time at the porcelain throne, and in any other universe, Erwin might have reserved the right to be the upset party in this scenario, but it was clear from the moment he caught the look on their face that the he would have to wait his turn.

Hange's list of grievances were extensive. He wasn't resting. He wasn't eating. Wasn't taking his medication on time, or at all, other than painkillers. The more serious symptoms, they said, will come sooner if he keeps doing this. If he could just hold on, just a little longer, they knew of experimental new treatments - and Erwin interrupted them then, because that was a kind of wishful thinking he wanted to banish from every one of their minds before it created more pain than he could bear to cause.

Erwin stopped them then, reminded Hange to focus on the Pond and the tissue preservation, and never imagined that he would need to remind them that their loyalty was to the Survey Corps alone.

  


*

  


Levi made sure to remove every spot of blood off him. He hitched his jacket higher to hide the gauze.

Kronos rose when Levi passed by the study. Levi took a few more steps past the open door and stopped. He stepped into enemy territory. He endangered his agents. Kronos would have to say something now, have to discipline him now.  

His nape burned against the cool slide of a titanium hand. He didn't flinch at the touch. Somehow, he expected it. Somehow, he knew.

Kronos rounded him. He moved his hand to rest over his wounded shoulder, and it was becoming difficult not to wince and give himself away.

"There are painkillers in the clinic," Kronos said, and moved his hand away, to the join of his shoulder and neck. 

So he knew. He didn't sound annoyed. Didn't look annoyed. His brows were drawn together, but there was another look to his eyes. A familiar one.

Levi forced his breathing to level. "Thought you weren't worried for me."

Kronos gave him a small smile. "Won't you let me save face, Levi?" he asked, as if Levi had any actual say in it.  

"No," Levi said, the struggle to keep his thoughts in order a great one with Kronos' thumb tracing idly at his neck. "Won't let you talk your way out of this one, either. That Eric kid-"

"Frank."

Levi frowned. "So it's true. You're treating her son."

"Sure."

"What are you getting in return? Some kinda detente? You really think they'd hold up their side of the-"

"Nothing."

Levi frowned harder. "What?"

Kronos' hand fell away. "I understand your cynicism-"

"So you're just treating the enemy's brat - for nothing?"

"Should I have turned him away?"

"No. But you didn't even try to-"

"And if I attempted a deal that the sisters refused, should I turn him away then?"

"You-" Levi started, but slammed his mouth shut before he said something that painted himself even more of a heartless opportunist than everything he'd already said. 

It wasn't the first time he'd fallen into a trap he intended for Kronos. So sure he was that there was a catch or a tell he just hadn't found. He could barely acknowledge the idea of a merciful Kronos, but a generous one, a compassionate one, stretched the imagination to snapping.

He had to talk to Erwin. His own Erwin. If Kronos wanted his cooperation so dearly, he would let them discuss it. He had shown himself to be more than reasonable so far, and deliberately so. Now that Levi was interested in starting a real dialogue, it would be strange if Kronos refused the simple request.

"I want to send a message," Levi said. 

  


*

  


Erwin watched footage of Dragunov, watched tapes of him speaking to Farlan, to Mike, to Hange. He was using his best tricks. Erwin had never even known Levi to sound so sincere. He was such a good actor.

They found Jones.

Rather, Jones found them. According to reports, she had simply walked right into a Survey division and demanded to speak with the brass.

Mike brought Erwin the recorded conversation. They, Hange and Nanaba listened in silence. No one spoke for a full minute after its end. 

Erwin made the trip to the interrogation room. They compromised with Nanaba, who, understandably, wanted little of Erwin's direct influence on the investigation, so Erwin was allowed to speak to Jones on the condition that he do it through the intercom system, and that Mike had the authority to cut him off whenever he pleased. Erwin understood her reticence, but it was unnecessary. He needed only to ask one thing of her.

Mike remotely switched on the mic as he sat opposite Jones. She was made aware of the arrangement.

Erwin leaned into the mic. "Welcome back, Imani."

Jones smiled. "Good to be back, commander."

"Former, I'm afraid."

"Habit. Just never imagined you'd retire, sir."

That earned a smile. "And I never imagined retirement to be so busy." He rubbed his spontaneously erupting temple, relieved, at least, to not need to worry about being seen for this particular conversation.

"Does Levi believe in him?" Erwin asked.

Mike studied Jones intently. Erwin, too, watched through the glass and glanced at the cameras pointed at her face and hands. She was as untroubled as could be.

"Almost."

Erwin frowned. It was an odd answer. She had just revealed herself to be an agent of Kronos, a messenger come to coordinate between the two sides and facilitate an agreement. This wasn't a show of faith. But it was unexpectedly honest.

He dabbed a handkerchief to his nose. It came back red.

"Does he believe in Titania?" 

"Yes, sir."

"Does he believe in Kronos?"

"Yes, sir."

"Does he believe that the only way to introduce Titania to this world would be to allow Kronos to switch with myself?"

"Yes, sir."

She had said it before, in her initial confession, but the sting hadn't lessened. Still, nothing she said could be trusted, least of all on its face. Jones had been a Survey agent for four years. She knew how to spin yarns. Levi could have been in a holding cell all this time, a bargaining chip and no more. The thought incensed him all over again. 

He couldn't say which was worse - that, or the thought of Levi coming around to Kronos' lies.

"Then tell me," Erwin said. "What is it that's keeping that 'almost' from becoming a 'yes'?"

"You, sir," Jones said without hesitation.

And maybe she said no more because she expected him to say something, anything, but Erwin was struck dumb.

Mike glanced at the glass. "Explain that, please," he said.

She shrugged, as if she didn't imagine the answer to be controversial at all. "The captain defers to you, Mr. Smith. He recommends an open dialogue. Kronos agrees."

"This open dialogue," Erwin said, "relies on us letting you go, I take it. To use the Pond and deliver our answer."

"Yes, sir."

"You understand why we can't do that."

Her jaw worked. "Frankly, sir, I don't. Like I said in my initial briefing, Kronos offers to switch any number of Survey agents to meet you and offer protection on the other side. He offers to send a team of Pond technicians to you immediately, to brief your engineers and explain the logistics of the switch, and the captain will be waiting on the other side to wel-"

"Then let me help you understand," Erwin said. "You have defected from the Survey Corps and contacted a known enemy of this organization-"

"Sir-"

"-and not only do you intend to continue this liaison, you expect Survey to  follow along unconditionally despite no move by Kronos to allow independent access to the Pond or to the methods by which he synthesizes Titania."

"You wouldn't be able to use it anyway," Jones said. "Pond's technicians need years of training before they're ever allowed near it. And as for Titania, I've said it the first time, too. Kronos insists on doing it himself. A single misstep could be a disaster, like-"

"Like releasing the viral Titania."

"I told you, it was stolen."

"So it was an accident."

Jones shifted uncomfortably. "It was."

"What you're telling me is that I should allow this man to switch into this world, into my body, because he alone has the knowledge and clarity of mind to complete this miracle cure, and that this is the same man whose incomprehensible negligence damned us to a half century of the most repugnant and existential plague in human history. You don't agree with the name - I see how you react to it - but I can't think of one that better describes him. He may not share the intent of the original Kronos, but oh, he would have made him proud-"

The little LED bulb by the mic flashed red. Mike had cut his mic. He excused himself.

Mike stepped out of the room. In a few moments, the door to the observation room opened.

"Erwin-"

"I won't sit back while she sells us a Dr. Jekyll and delivers a Mr. Hyde."

"She said in the first briefing that it was Intermipol who stole those vials."

"It doesn't matter who stole it, Mike. How can you not see that? All his infinite experience, all his everlasting wisdom and generosity," Erwin sneered, "and he can't protect a few little vials-"

Mike stepped forward. "Erwin-"

"To think we're such desperate neanderthalic savages to him that we're nothing without his-"

Mike grabbed the handkerchief out of his hand and shoved it over his nose. "Shit," he said as it soaked through with blood, though Erwin had been so incensed that he hadn't felt anything at all. "Gonna have me parting the Red Sea, here. Name's Michael, not Moses."

Erwin pushed him away and wiped away the worst of it. Mike watched him.  "Guess Nan made the right call, leaving you out here."

"Wasn't this bad before," Erwin said to himself. The flow had stemmed, thankfully, but so soaked was the cloth that he could barely clutch it without rivulets sliding dizzyingly over his hand. He felt wrung dry.

"What are we gonna do, Erwin?" Mike asked intently. "If every one of us agrees with Kronos and you don't?"

Erwin's breath lurched in his chest. "You can't be serious." He threw the handkerchief into a bin. He turned back slowly, thoughtful. "Are you keeping something from me?"

"No," Mike said vehemently. "Every recording, every testimony, every lead. You know all of it."

"Then how? Hange is an idealist. Nanaba doesn't have the time of day to sift through it all so she defers to you. But you, Mike? How is Jones swaying you? How is Dragunov swaying you?"

Mike crossed his arms. "I've been wondering something, too. Wondering how you aren't. Wondering why you hang on to his every mistake as if you've never made one in your life."

"Life, Mike. Singular. He's lived more than any of his surrogates can describe. Hange saw his footprint in every universe they mapped the last time they visited Han. Whole universes devoid of human life. Hunted to extinction. And when there was nothing more to eat, the titans ate each other and then themselves. That's not a "mistake", Mike."

"So is he malicious or is he negligent?"

"As of now,  both."

"You think he's a god, Erwin? That why you expect him to be all-perfect, all-knowing?"

Erwin thought for a moment. "I think no one man should have that kind of power. I think if he insists on playing god, then he should be judged as one."

Mike was silent for a beat, then nodded to himself. "Alright. One last thing that's been eating me. Don't answer right away. Would you believe Kronos if he was an instance of me? Or Hange? Or Nanaba? Levi? Anyone but you?"

"We have more than enough to debate without adding pointless hypotheticals-"

"Hey - I said not right away. And I don't think this one's pointless."

Erwin sighed.

Mike  gripped his shoulder. "Humor me."

Erwin said nothing. If Kronos was not some unknowable alien nor some virus or parasite that snared an unfortunate instance of himself, so be it. He was Kronos. Kronos was him. But it was an instance of him that went too far. An instance that long ago forfeited his right to forgiveness.

Mike returned to Jones.

They convened her questioning for the time being. Jones agreed to enter herself into deprogramming. It went unsaid that she was to be placed under heavy guard and not allowed to leave the campus.

Before rising, she informed them that as a gesture of transparency, Kronos will release every last sleeper agent within the Survey Corps and the former Intermipol.

The effect was immediate. So many agents stepped out that Mike was forced to rent lecture halls from nearby universities to hold them until Survey Security could process them all. 

Every story was different. Every agent was different. Some had been undercover for ten years. Others, ten weeks. Some did it because they believed Kronos to be an extension of Erwin, and therefore, an extension of their duty to the Survey Corps. Others did it for the promise of salvation. For the chance to save themselves, to save friends, to save family. The signal, they all confessed, bypassed the need to switch so many people at once at a single Pond by using one of many trigger words or phrases designed to communicate with each agent. Given the highly personal nature of each person's trigger, every last one was, by necessity, unique to the agent. Each agent and their counterpart were conditioned with a set number of them, some trained to respond to more triggers than others. 

Report. Standby. Abandon assignment. Guard target. Confess. 

Erwin knew every name on that list, active duty or retired, living or passed.

A sizable minority of the agents had been planted in R&D. Once given clearance to divulge all they knew, the agents, Hange said, divulged such an explosion of new data and methodology that it rivaled even the gains made using Dragunov's instructions for titan tissue preservation.

Erwin asked Hange if there was any way they could develop Titania themselves. Mike perked up at the question but mercifully said nothing of the fact that Erwin was at least entertaining the idea that Titania was real.

 Hange reported that all but reserve members of R&D were in pursuit of the answer to that question. Still, they said, it really is one thing to know what you want, and entirely another to make it possible. All their attempts, in comparison to the markup of the initial virus, seemed, in Hange's words, amateurish, childish. They could not build Rome in a day.

Egret was spotted the very next day. Farlan had halted his FIrefly work entirely ever since he stormed out and devoted all his resources to hunting Egret. He had done in days what no one else could have done in weeks. Mike and Hange had a spirited debate over whether it counted for an apology or a middle finger.

Mike came around to the safe house with her confession. Erwin raised a questioning brow as Mike flipped open a laptop without a word, mouth drawn in a thin line to stifle a smile. 

"Shame her name isn't Canary," he said.

The recording began. Mike recited her rights and established the date and time of the recording before addressing Egret, who sprawled in her chair and somehow managed to prop her legs up on the table at an obscene angle while still being cuffed to it.

Erwin frowned. "Did you tell her to-"

"Four times." Mike squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Cuffed her ankles. Broke out three times. Wasn't worth the trouble."

"Mm," Erwin agreed.

"State your name for the record," Mike asked in the video.

"Egret."

"Full name."

"Red Egret."

Mike rubbed his eyes while Erwin reluctantly found the cat and mouse routine pretty amusing.

"-look, man," she barreled on for six uninterrupted minutes, "it's a bird! Long-ass neck, genus  _Egretta_? Look, not the  _Reddish_  Egret, people give me shit about that subspecies all the-"

Eventually, Mike's hard "Enough" was enough to sober her.

"Fine, big guy. Josephina Benítez Santiago. Okay? Need me to spell it for you? F-U-C-"

Mike assured her that he could take care of it.

The confession itself was more revealing.

"Hell yeah," she said at Mike's prompting. "Course I'm pissed he dropped the hammer on my ass. But I get it. Sisters put such a dollar sign on his head, shit...I'd've done way worse way sooner in his chair.  And he's not all wrong. I got more than one offer."

“From the sisters?”

“No, handsome, from Big Bird.”

"I assume you turned them down?"

"Sure did.  He musta caught me speaking to their agents. Must be why he figured I flip-flopped." Her smile waned. "But I don't do that shit," she said severely. "I make a promise, I stick the fuck by it."

She corroborated Dragunov. Every word.

It meant nothing. Of course she would.

When asked, she swore she had no idea how Kronos planned to switch, or even how he continued switching his agents, because the Pond she knew and used as per his orders had been in one of the Sunbelt bases. It would have long since been bombed and irradiated.  If he had more, she didn't know. Despite being at Kronos' left hand, he was startlingly good at keeping secrets. That, at least, was a surprise to no one.

Erwin couldn't imagine that there wasn't another, but Egret wouldn't budge. She swore up and down that she didn't know. Polygraph came back clean.

Mike dispatched a covert team to investigate the site Egret gave them, one of two smoking bases off Dallas. There was a slim chance they could realistically recover anything of value, but they weren't drowning in leads. It was something.

Hange came down to listen as soon as they tore away from R&D, which by every passing day appeared to be the throes of its own Renaissance. 

"Take whatever records you have of your first attempt at building the Pond from hard drives or from your ID ring," Erwin said to Hange after catching them up, "along with anything we find from the bombed Pond, and put a team on it again."

Hange scoffed. "You think- you really think it's that easy-"

"No. But we have to start. I wouldn't go as far as calling Kronos generous, but because of his order, we now have former sleeper agents who swear by their knowledge of the Pond."

"And, what, you think they'll just up and tell me how to build it? That they won't lie, won't...won't waste our time..." Hange said, their bluster trying for skepticism and falling short.

"You know as well as I," Erwin said, "that the process is so unlike any engineering feat that was ever attempted on this side that you would learn immeasurably even if every word they say is a lie. You'll have the opportunity to analyze the language they use, the steps they take or omit-"

"Okay, alright," Hange said. "You'd think this was a second grade science fair," they grumbled. 

But they lingered like they wanted to say something else, and they turned to leave when they decided to hold their tongue.

"You aren't worried at all about the agents," Erwin said to their departing back. Hange stopped and turned.

"Not really," Hange said. Their eyes dart to Erwin's nose. It had long since taken to growing numb, so these glances were the only way Erwin knew to wipe away the blood.

"Just don't really see the point," Hange shrugged.

Erwin frowned. "If Kronos-"

"You won't be there to see it."

"No," Erwin agreed.

Now Hange frowned. Mike showed himself in, read the atmosphere in the room, and promptly made himself as small as he reasonably could for a man of his stature on the way to the kitchen.

"Then what's the point?" Hange asked.

"To rob Kronos of his leverage," Erwin said. 

"There's no way Kronos doesn't have a spare."

"We're not using his Pond one way or the other. The switch will not happen."

Hange blinked. Otherwise, they were still. Unnaturally still, for Hange. 

“Erwin," they said severely, "if Titania is real, if it can do one one-hundredth of what Kronos' pals say it can do, we can't be the ones to stop people from getting it. I can't live knowing I did that. And I know you couldn't either."

Erwin sighed. "You're right. I suppose you're not bound by anything I say, anyway-"

"What the hell does that mean?" Hange said, their voice rising. "When has that ever mattered?" They advanced on him. "Do you think I once went along with an order I didn't agree with? You think I'm some passive lab coat princess who can't-"

"Your loyalty is first to the Survey Corps-"

"It's to  _you._ It was always to you. _"_

Mike strode out with a burger in his mouth and two more in his hands. The plates clattered pointedly as he set them down and sprawled across the couch. They hadn't let Erwin eat alone since discovering him. Erwin knew he should feel something other than anxiety and annoyance and a lick of fury but he couldn't, couldn't hear beyond the depths of Hange's willful ignorance.

He opened his mouth, but Hange, appallingly, shushed him. They pointed at the burger. "Eat."

Erwin tried to speak again, over which Hange babbled until Erwin stopped. They kept pointing.

"I've force fed titans, Erwin," they said with a thinly veiled threat Erwin knew they weren't above delivering.

"Hange's right," Mike said as Erwin took his seat and ate, eager to mitigate the glare on Hange's face. "Sure, we agree with the Corps, but do you think we would've stuck around like we had if we were commanded by a George Feriday or any of his friends? Hell, even Shadis was rubbing me wrong near the end. Hange, stop pointing and eat."

Hange stuffed the burger in their mouth.

"The Pond," Erwin admitted, "is for Levi. Not for me. As long as I live and Kronos has a reason to keep Levi alive and well, we will attempt to extract him. If we are able to investigate their side, we do it. If not, if Levi cannot be extracted, all instances of the Pond on this earth should be found and destroyed, I am put down, and no one ever speaks of this universe hopping again.”

"Put down," Mike repeated to himself. He looked like he wanted dearly to say something not too kind to that. He only shook his head and left the room.

Hange didn't look him in the eye. "Almost sound happy about it. Dying and all."

"Why not?" Erwin asked without thinking. "Without me, it's over."

"Then why prolong it?" Hange asked, blunt.

Erwin didn't mention Mike's threat. Even without it, he imagined that he must have stayed as long as he has for a reason. "I have to hope Kronos thinks keeping Levi alive is a way to pressure me.”

"So you're living for Levi."

"For-" Erwin stopped, exhausted. He sighed. "For the mission."

"Saving Levi has nothing to do with the mission."

"He's one of our best agents-"

"Actually, it contradicts the mission," Hange interrupted. "According to you, stopping Kronos at all costs is the mission, no? That means letting Levi go."

Erwin frowned in disbelief. "So you think so little of him-"

"No," they said. "Just want you to quit pretending. One foot in the grave and you're still pretending."

Erwin asked them to leave as politely as he could before just barely making it to the bathroom. He couldn't remember a throat that wasn't raw, couldn't remember ever actually being surprised by spots of red on his collar. 

He thought back to Mike's question, and maybe he was running out of time, and maybe he was running out of strength, but it was becoming more and more difficult to pretend. It was becoming difficult to separate Kronos from himself. He wasn't using the standards of a god to measure Kronos' record, to measure his intent. He measured him as he measured himself. 

In the morning, Erwin contacted Nanaba and insisted on being allowed to see Jones in person. She was still an agent of the Survey Corps. She was Levi's best student. She deserved something more than a cold exchange in an interrogation room. It was only sensible given that there was no danger that she would report back. 

  


*

  


Jones reported back.

She was able to briefly switch back and forth by laying in the Pond until enough power was freed elsewhere in the tower to overclock the Pond's systems and forcibly allow their counterparts to meet in one head. It was a risk, Kronos said, if the surge of energy was so great as to alert the sisters and rile them into acting. But the risk of losing contact was greater.

Jones' counterpart emerged from the pond. The tendrils hadn't yet entirely detached from her spine when she spoke.

"He refused."

Levi turned away to hide his disappointment. Kronos thanked Jones and invited her to clean up and then join them in his study for a full report.

She spoke for nearly an hour. Levi focused on certain parts over others, until he couldn't anymore. Until the ringing in his ears drowned out everything else.

_He leaned against things. Wore gloves indoors. Pretended to sneeze a few times, but I saw the blood. He crossed his arms to hide the trembling. I've never seen the man so thin. He's so sick. He's so-_

"Levi?"

Levi came to. He had lost himself in the echo of the words. Kronos hadn't kept Erwin's state from him. He had told him a week ago, more. He might have even revealed it the moment he himself knew of it. Not that it mattered. It wasn't true. Of course Kronos meant to spook him, to inject urgency into his decision. But Jones couldn't have made that up. Not that. She wouldn't be so cruel.

He felt Kronos' eyes on him. 

  


*

  


A low siren crackled on and wailed throughout the safe house. Three sets of auxiliary doors shut over the main entrance and distant clangs announced the reinforcement of all other exits. A pair of plainclothes agents, two of the five who patrolled the safe house, found Erwin as he followed protocol and headed to the reinforced safe room, their weapons drawn.

"Report," he said.

"Radical infiltration. Local. Gunfire reported at Barracks G, H and L," one agent said. 

"The rest of the detail is stationed at each chokepoint," the other said. "This way, sir."

The pair lead him underground and into the room, passing steel walls a foot thick. The agents shut the first door and used a console to begin the shutdown sequence of the far heavier, reinforced interior door.

Before it could whine entirely shut, the power went out. Red emergency lights flickered on.

"Backup generator," one agent called as she rushed Erwin to the far end of the room and ran back to cover her partner as he bolted to unlatch a panel set into the floor. 

The first door shuddered. It was heavy, too, but the bolts wouldn't hold it for long. Erwin slipped his hand into his jacket, wrapped it around the derringer.

"Rodriguez-" the radio crackled.

"Sir," called out the agent covering the door. Her partner hauled the generator toward the door's console.

"False ala-m," the agents' superior reported, voice crackling through the comms. "C-de Bravo-E-ght-Tw--Red. Open 'er up."

The agents exchanged glances.

"But sir," Rodriguez said, "The power-"

"Yo-r bud-y Jasper up h-re went trig--r hap-y agai-. H-t a cable. Open up, we're rig-t outsi-e." 

Rodriguez covered her partner as he reached for the door lock.

Erwin's hair stood on end. Something wasn't right. There were safeguards. There was no way a single shot could power down the entire safe house.

" _Wait_ -"

The door slammed open. Erwin ducked behind a bend in the wall as Rodriguez' short-lived fire ricocheted off the walls. He recognized the clatter of a gun being kicked to the side. Then, sounds of struggle. 

He peered out and expected a squadron. He peered out and watched a single man at once disarm and concuss one agent with a kick and put to sleep the other with an arm around his throat. No wasted movements. No wasted breath. 

Casting aside in the chaos of echoing shots and siren wails the oddity of a radical using nonlethal means, Erwin jerked a tie clip out of his pocket - never quite letting it go since the last time he needed it - and angled it beyond the wall to watch the scene in its reflection. But there was no one there.

Before he could think to react, the clip was kicked out of his hand. The radical rounded the bend in the wall. Erwin moved clear of his range and aimed his derringer between his eyes. 

Between Levi's - Dragunov's - eyes. 

  


*

  


Kronos' brows drew together, and if Levi could think beyond  _but_   _I saw the blood_ , he might have even thought Kronos looked concerned."I know some of that must have been difficult to hear-"

Levi rose. "I'm tired," he said, and stepped forward. Kronos stepped back. Levi crowded him against a broad pane of glass. It was a steep drop.

"Tell me you made her say that shit," he said lowly, because speaking any louder might just legitimize it, might just make it real. Levi looked up at him, looked Kronos - Erwin - in the eye, and let the barest hint of of a plea color his words. "Just tell me it's all bullshit. So I can sit down." He tugged on one end of his bolo to straighten it. He meant to let the strand fall. His palm curled around it instead. "So I can stop thinking about doing what I really, really want to do right now." He clutched it, white-knuckled. "Just tell me. Just tell me it isn't true."

  


*

  


Dragunov threw off the scarf hiding his face and the cap and hood from his eyes. He stepped forward. Erwin stepped back. His back met the wall.

Erwin hadn't realized how his hands shook before Dragunov stopped when the barrel of the outstretched derringer touched the center of his forehead. 

  


*

  


Kronos, body threaded with a line of tension but a moment ago, let it unspool. His hands hung loose by his sides. 

_Radiation poisoning._

Levi breathed in sharply. It wasn't true.

Kronos' head hung a fraction, too, bowed by gravity, and something else. Something like submission. Something like apology.

_Probably four weeks._

His eyes burned. It wasn't true. 

 _But_   _I saw the blood._

It wasn't true.

"It's true," Kronos said.

  


*

  


Sirens wailed. Others would come. Dragunov must know that. And yet he lingered like he had all the time in the world.

"The radicals-" Erwin started.

"There are no radicals."

Erwin stared. "The superior-"

"Impersonated."

"My agents-"

"Breathing."

"The code?"

"Stolen."

Erwin lowered the derringer. If the man wanted him dead, he could have done it a thousand ways with or without a barrel between his eyes. He had just pierced one of the most secure Survey safe houses in the city. 

But this didn't feel like a hit. And if Dragunov intended to incapacitate and drag him into Kronos' Pond himself, this method of standing around and chatting him up while every idle second was another in which additional agents stormed the house was either stupid or arrogant, and if Dragunov was anything like Levi, he was neither of these things.

"Thought this might be more convincing than a resume," Dragunov said.

It should have been a joke. It should have sounded like a joke. Dragunov wasn't laughing.

The power came back on. Boots thundered down the steps.

"Maybe," Erwin said. "If I only knew what position you were applying for."

The agents were moments from the door, and still Dragunov made no move to wrap up the show. He didn't even look worried, in the way agents who engaged with titans enough times lost the capacity. Either they killed the titan, or they died. Either Dragunov convinced Erwin, or he would never get another chance.

"Strike a deal with me, Erwin."

  


*

  


Levi didn't remember striking him, didn't realize he'd moved at all until two or three sets of hands jerked him away. As he struggled, he caught Kronos from his periphery raising a hand to his nose.

And when Levi stilled and got a good look at the blood slipping into the delicate grooves between the titanium plates, he laughed.

"Don't even need to guess what he looks like now," Levi spat. 

Kronos raised that same hand to signal something to his agents. Levi's chest tightened. This was it. This was all it took. Now he had only to push farther, split him wider, and he'll know who Kronos really is. Behind all the niceties and games, behind all his pretense of being Erwin. He would crack. Everyone cracked. He wasn't Erwin. He could never be Erwin.

But the agents let him go. They even left the study.

"What are you doing?" Levi asked after the agents. "Where are you-"

"I'm sorry, Levi."

Levi turned back to Kronos. He hadn't moved once in the entire ordeal. He hadn't raised his hands in defense, hadn't even raised his voice.

"It must mean so little coming from me, but," Kronos said, and strode to the desk to pull a square of cloth from a drawer. "I deeply wish there was another way."

Kronos wiped the blood from his nose. Levi watched, stiff limbed, until a drop raced to his chin and came perilously close to falling. And maybe this was backfiring spectacularly - again - because there was little he hated more than a resigned, bloodied Erwin.

Levi strode to him with iron limbs and took the cloth from his hand. The drop bloomed on the square and snaked through pale fibers. And it was easy to take it from there. It was easy to wet it in the glass of water on the desk and run the cloth over his nose, over  the shining bow of his lip. It was easy to pretend.

Levi drew away. His own hands were stained. 

"But you don't regret it," Levi said.

Kronos met his eye with such sincerity that Levi was sick with it. 

"No."

  


*

  


Agents poured into the room. Dragunov went quietly. Mike wasn't far behind, begging Erwin to hold off on the  _I told you so's_  until right after he figured out how a single man could have broken out, faked a radical incursion, hitched a ride to a safe house despite no evidence pointing to Erwin's location there, infiltrated the safe house, short circuited the generator, and overpowered a squad of guards not only without a single weapon, but without even being seen or recognized as having escaped until he was already in the safe house.

Mike rushed Erwin to the Security hub without another word, and refused to hear any from Erwin either. It was the single most fortified Survey structure on the continent, and Mike wasn't shy about his intent to never let Erwin leave it again without an armed platoon stationed at every street corner in the city.

"What do you mean, he just surrendered?" Mike pressed. 

"Mike," Nanaba chided as she, too, waited, coming to them live from Johannesburg on the overhead monitor, "wait for Hange."

Mike stepped outside his office to do his pacing and complaining in peace. They had all read Erwin's official, clean, statement, and not one, rightly, assumed it was anywhere near the full story.

Hange arrived, at last cleared by Mikes doubled - tripled, Nanaba corrected - security measures, and Erwin told them the rest. It was met with silence.

"Yes," Hange said, breaking it. 

"Yes, what?" Nanaba asked.

"Yes, deal."

"No deal," Mike said.

Erwin raised a brow at him. "Even after-"

"Yeah,” Mike said incredulously, “ _especially_ after claiming the whole thing was his idea of a job application."

Nanaba barely hid a smile. "You're almost as upset as the first time Levi did this."

"The first time," Mike said, "we barely caught Farlan and Isabel in time."

Nanaba hummed in agreement. "Erwin?"

"I abstain."

It was Mike's turn to be surprised, and not a little annoyed. "Son of a bitch," he said without heat. "Finally, I come to your side and you take off again."

"What's biting you?" Hange asked.

Erwin leaned back. His hands curled and uncurled on his thighs. He opened his mouth in a few small starts before forcing himself to get it out. 

"I can't pretend I can be impartial anymore."

Hange smiled reassuringly. Mike and Nanaba shared a look. "I mean," Mike said. "By that logic, none of us are. We were his friends, too-"

Hange made a distressed noise. Nanaba looked away. Erwin hadn't quite the nerve to spell it out.

Mike stared at them all in turn, incredulous. 

"...Like I was saying," Mike went on as Nanaba put her face in her hands, sunlight bouncing off a ring that definitely wasn't there before, "It shouldn't be any diffe-"

"LET'S," Hange yelled, beet red and staring a hole into the far wall before lowering their voice, "take his word on this one."

Erwin sighed as Mike eyed Hange, then him, then Nanaba, and back again. He raised his hands. "I want to know what's going on."

Something on Erwin's face must have clued him in. He crossed his arms, mouth agape. "This wouldn't happen to be related to the missing Ring security footage-"

"NOPE," Hange bellowed. 

Mike shook his head. "How am I the last to- fine. Okay. Nevermind."

"We're tied," Nanaba reminded them.

"Your call," Hange said to her.

"Don't forget the part when he concussed half a dozen agents," Mike said.

"Or," Hange countered, "the part where he's the most morally and technically qualified person on this side to find evidence corroborating Kronos."

"Or disproving," Erwin added.

Because that was the offer. Dragunov's freedom for Erwin's answers. For definitive, physical proof of Kronos' claims.

"Why are we suddenly forgetting," Mike said, "that of course he'd wanna defend Kronos?"

Hange blew out a breath. "And why are  _you_  forgetting that he just reunited with Far and Isabel? Do you really think he'd make a shitshow of this side knowing they're still alive and-"

"Erwin said it himself before," Mike said. "He's good. This could all be part of the show."

"You can't believe that! You saw him! You saw what he looked like when Farlan came to see him-"

"He  _just_ impersonated a senior officer to-"

"That's not even-"

"Because," Erwin started, then stopped. Mike and Hange fell quiet. 

He had hardly acknowledged this change in his thinking, let alone willed himself to say it aloud. It had happened quietly, leisurely. A seed breaking the soil.

No one interrupted him as he took a steadying breath. "Because," he said, "Levi never follows blindly."

Mike looked down. Hange nodded fiercely. 

"And I know," Erwin went on despite the ache in his throat, "I know these instances aren't replicas. They're not clones. They're not reflections. Every one of them is an individual. Every one of them, of us, acts, thinks and breathes on the strength and meaning of the experiences born of their unique and singular lives." He looked at Nanaba. "But there is something," he insisted. "Some philosophy, some...engine in every instance of myself I've ever seen in those visions. I don't presume to know anyone else's. But if I had to guess Levi's, it would be that."

Nanaba considered him, all of them. Her eyes fell back to him. "One more time. What exactly were his terms?"

"He requests unconditional freedom for one week," Erwin said, "At which point he will return with whatever he uncovers-"

"Why do we need him for that?" Mike asked. "Intermipol's files are all out there."

"Maybe," Nanaba thought aloud, "it has nothing to do with Intermipol-"

"Iaso," Hange whispered. Everyone turned to them. "I-I mean," Hange stammered. "If I had to guess. They were big forty years ago, too, when Kronos' lackies switched over to harvest the first thirteen. Hell, they've had the pharma market cornered since the 20's. Can't imagine a guy would send surrogates to develop Titania and not give 'em a knock for one reason or another."

A chill stole through the room. 

“I can think of a reason,” Erwin said.

"But why would Kronos want anything to do with Iaso?" Mike asked. "He's riding everything on a drug to make every other drug obsolete. If he ever contacted Iaso 'Saint Moneybucks' Industries-" 

"Then maybe," Nanaba said, "he hasn't been entirely honest with us. With anyone."

"Aaand who else but the guy who knows him best to find out?" Hange pressed.

Mike wrung his hands. The velocity of Hange's bouncing leg could power a small town.

"Alright,” Nanaba said with finality. "He's free."

"Provided," she added as Hange whooped and Mike exhaled sharply, "that he gives Mr. Zacharius here a thorough account of how he managed to break out of a maximum security cell, locate Erwin, then break into the most secure safe house in New York."

Mike scratched his nose, somewhat placated. The light caught on a band on his ring finger that definitely wasn't there before either.

Nanaba requested then that she and Erwin speak alone.

When the door shut, she said, "You will supervise him. Report his findings directly to me when he returns."

Erwin frowned. "I didn't think I needed to clarify that I recuse myself from this entire operation as far as Dragunov is concerned."

"No, you didn't, because you're not."

"Nan, I can't-"

"I want you front and center on the Kronos op. Don't think I can't read between the lines, Smith. You know how Kronos thinks, because you know how you think. And if Dragunov knows him as well as Levi knows you, then you and Dragunov are our best bet at understanding this guy."

Erwin frowned, but made no move to argue again. There was no point, and nothing else he could possibly say. She was right.

“Hey,” she said. "You're not alone. Quit acting like it.”

Erwin nodded. "I know, Nan. Thanks." He laughed softly.

She grinned. "There's a sound I haven't heard in a while.”

"Hey, Nan."

"Mm."

He tapped his ring finger. "When's the big day?"

Her face fell. Her arm moved as if she'd clenched her hand out of frame, the hand whose finger the ring rested on, the hand she'd briefly brought into sight of the camera a few minutes before. "Erwin, I'm sorry, we didn't want to- I mean, it was so sudden, and so much was happening that we were- I mean, we couldn't- stop laughing, Erwin."

Erwin couldn't help it. It was finally happening. They had forbidden everyone from even broaching the topic once it became clear that toppling Intermipol would require every last ounce of their attention. No time, they said. Doesn't matter, they said. Won't mean a thing one way or the other, they said.

They didn't believe their own platitudes and neither did Erwin. His friends were getting married.

"I'm so happy for you, Nan. You don't know how."

"Next week."

Erwin's smile fell. "Next week-?"

"It's next week. We were gonna tell you tonight, before all this fun breaking and entering sidelined us. I'm flying over soon as I can. It'll be a small thing, nothing fancy-"

He hadn't seen the ring before, nor the band. They couldn't have decided it more than a few days ago. They might have even done it that very day. That same morning. "You're rushing it. Is it because-"

"Don't you dare go there, Erwin, or I don't know what I'll do to you. Yeah, we want you there more than we wanna throw some fancy glitzy thing where we-" She stopped and breathed harshly through her nose, borrowing the habit from Mike, who had borrowed it from his counterpart. "-where we've got everything and everyone in the world but you."

  


There were few books in the Security hub. They swapped computer labs for libraries and kiosks for books. It made sense. The hub was a place less for leisure and the pleasures of small things than for ruthless efficiency. Erwin didn't imagine himself a Luddite, but he preferred something he could hold. Something he could touch.

Soon it didn't matter whether there was a single book in the entire structure. Erwin had time enough to feel impressed with how well he held himself together throughout the whole ordeal before the nausea returned in full. 

He leaned against the tile. He must have dozed, because when he came to, Hange was shoving a glass of water into his hands. They parked themself next to him. They didn't speak. Words weren't nearly enough, and they were far too much.

"How does it feel?" Erwin asked. At Hange's confusion, he clarified. "Titania."

Hange huffed in surprise. "Oh, yeah. Still hasn't sunk in. That it was Titania all along, I mean, instead of some fancy tech."

Erwin concentrated on Hange's breathing to stem the nausea. His own was too irregular to steady him.

"It's heaven. You understand so much, you think and feel so much. Turned this dusty old abacus," they said, pointing at their own head, "into a mile-high render farm." They were silent for a beat. Their eyes clouded over with the memory of it.

“But I think,” Hange went on, gaze sharpened, “I'm glad to be here. Instead of in Han's place, I mean.”

Erwin nudged their shoulder. "Even with that dusty abacus?"

Hange grinned. “Yeah. It's just...Han's entire world is the size of a ship. When they switched into 3713B, they were saved from a dying universe, saved from a ship rigged to blow, sure. But the ship they're in now is all they have. Its all they know. People live and die there, and they just don't have the kind of terraforming tech to settle on another planet and cultivate it. Starlight fuels them and they grow their own food and they recycle everything and it's this little terrarium floating in a dead sea. It's over for them. They're just running out the clock.”

“Are they that far from Earth?"

“They are. To FTL jump from just one star to another, they'd need to ration supplies for years to compensate for the energy needed to do it. Even with Titania, it's...it's just too late. Like being stranded in the ocean on an island of gold. I don't know how many generations it'll take before they can even make it one one-thousandth of the way home, and that's if the ship doesn't rot, if there's no infighting, no freak accidents...no. It's too late. Han was the only one.”

"The only one to see Earth," Erwin said. 

“Yeah. For a few days, they were home. And then they weren't. So I'd rather be here. Rather here than anywhere else, or anytime," Hange said. "Feels like everything's just starting, you know?"

  


*

  


Levi silently rounded the desk as Kronos worked and wrapped his hands around his throat. Kronos' pen stilled. He didn't move.

“I could," Levi said, and slowly, he squeezed. There were no agents nearby. The doors were shut.

Kronos' mouth parted. His lungs strained to draw breath. He didn't move to stop him.

“You could,” he said.

Levi squeezed. “What do you recommend?”

Kronos' mouth parted to draw what little breath he could. Yet he still made no move to stop him.

“Make a choice you won't regret.”

  


*

  


Erwin successfully overruled Mike in his bid to step outside. He almost shook with cabin fever.

It somewhat dampened his enjoyment of the waters' edge knowing Mike had not been entirely joking about stationing platoon on every corner, but they were blessedly out of sight, and Erwin could almost pretend there was no one there but himself and the river pouring into the deep blue sea. Until there was another.

He recognized the stillness in the air, the lack of shadow, the presence and non presence. Only one person knew how to do that. Only one person gave him this feeling.

“I'm cleared,” Dragunov said. Erwin didn't turn around, and Dragunov didn't move to round Erwin, to place himself within his sight. Despite all Erwin had said and done to make him out to be thoroughly unwelcome, still, Dragunov did him this small mercy.

Erwin hated it. It wasn't right. He should hate Erwin. Maybe if he hated him, Erwin would imagine himself justified to keep hating in turn – whether or not it was for the right reasons, or for any reason at all.

“I suppose you want my blessing now,” Erwin said before thinking better of it, before wondering if he should, for once, bite his barbed tongue, “before you report to Kronos.”

“I promised.”

“They can be broken.”

“Have someone follow me."

“You'd lose them in seconds."

“I could have left at any time.”

“Not if you weren't ordered to.”

The river gushed along the pier. There was no other sound but that familiar gurgle and the lash of an evening gale. Levi, and by extension, Dragunov, was so adept at hiding his steps that he might have already left. But as a third swell crashed against the pier, he spoke again.

“She told me what you said. The engine thing.”

Erwin needed to have a talk with Nanaba about the merits of confidentiality.

He rubbed his ring finger absently with his thumb. Even this, this small reminder of Levi, this ring, was lost to him. Confiscated in reintegration and lost when Intermipol fell.

There was nothing else to say. Nothing else to do. They just didn't have the time.

“Go,” Erwin said as the sea swallowed the sun.

“I don't make promises I can't keep.”

Erwin turned, but Dragunov was gone, and he wondered how he lived to see the day he'd lost Levi a third time.

  


*

  


Levi loosened his grip. Kronos' fevered pulse pounded against his slackened palms.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! The last chapter will come straight to ao3 on July 12.


	24. Someone Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ♫ [ F+TM - Seven Devils](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBcXe2B97TQ&ab_channel=sarica10)  
> 

Nanaba authorized the creation of a new wing within the deprograming center designed to understand the psychological and psychosomatic impact of switching from one universe to another. Doctors underwent the most rigorous vetting process in the center's history so that they may best counsel their charges.

Isabel couldn't help but pity a few of the  doctors, veterans in their fields who, it was becoming clear, had no idea what they'd signed up for when they agreed to join the wing.  Isabel was held in a separate wing, but she found herself counseling them through the complexities of switching and universe hopping when the brass looked the other way.

The effects of reintegration, she figured, were long ago reversed, but the Survey Corps had decades more experience in that field than in anything relating to the Pond, so she was inclined - reluctantly - to trust them when they held her a while longer, ran a few more tests to root out any last lingering symptoms.

She had only to remember what she'd done for the shame to quiet her restlessness. Levi was gone because of her. 

Farlan visited nearly every day. He told Isabel about him. About this other Levi. An other who was actually theirs, and theirs who was actually an other. She didn't like the name Dragunov, couldn't imagine it was given kindly, and Farlan, too, admitted to using it only because Levi himself had given his counterpart the name.

It was a violent name. Isabel couldn't imagine he took kindly to being named after a gun.

 Farlan laughed suddenly. He stretched out on the courtyard bench.

"Must be so weird, that other world," he said. "You know, I asked him to speak in their language and it was the funniest thing. Couldn't understand a word."

"Can't be that different."

"Maybe not...but knowing that it's from an entirely different universe...imagine that."

“Yeah,” Isabel said. The sun glared on her titanium leg as she swung it to and fro. “Imagine.”

 

*****

 

Levi watched Kronos. He watched him check in with his biochemists, watched him single out one or the other by name and chastise them for overworking. He watched Kronos convene a meeting with Pond technicians early to help a technician-in-training understand a portion of biotech interface they never could quite wrap their head around. 

And Levi watched Kronos meet clinic patients. Every afternoon. He caught them either right before or after dinner, and occasionally even made the time to eat with them. No question went unanswered. Every new arrival was greeted like family. No credit, no problem.

Kronos even encouraged Levi to accompany him to the atrium that housed the Pond while he spoke with its technicians, encouraged him to ask any question he had and look around wherever he pleased. It was telling, the ease with which he allowed him inside with no guards inside despite knowing Levi could knock out every last one of them in seconds if the desire struck him. Levi entertained fantasies of doing just that and climbing inside and miraculously switching back, but he knew, and Kronos knew, and everyone in that room knew that there were a thousand and one reasons it would accomplish nothing at all.

They couldn't try the overclock trick with Jones for at least another few weeks for the sake of her health, and to repair the systems that just barely together through the first surge. They didn't have weeks. They had no time at all.

Agents reported that Jones had been entered into deprogramming in Core. Security was impenetrable. Even if it wasn't, breaking her out would be antithetical to their efforts to endear themselves to Erwin. Detaining the messenger wasn't quite shooting them, but the effect was no different.

Levi sat in a chair in the study, hands busy with tea. A window here was a window there. Early Grey here was Early Grey there. Sometimes, alone like this, he could almost pretend he was home. 

The door began to open.

Levi didn't even wait for it to open all the way. “What do you get out of all this?”

Kronos stilled at the unprompted interrogation before opening the door the rest of the way and shutting it behind him. There was something like amusement in the curve of his mouth.

"Out of...?"

"Don't play dumb." 

Kronos shrugged off his jacket. The sleeve caught on the plating in his titanium hand. He slipped it out pensively, eyes caught on a stray gleam.

"Redemption?"

Kronos stilled. After a moment, he turned to Levi. "No. Not that."

His eye caught the cup of tea on his desk. Levi didn't think anything of offering it to him if he was going to have one himself. It was basic etiquette. And he knew Dragunov had done the same, he knew it the way he knew which streets his counterpart walked, and which he avoided.

But Kronos looked at it for a moment like he'd never seen tea before, like it was the 8th wonder.

And when the moment passed, Levi couldn't remember why his question even mattered.

Levi wondered if he was being obstinate. If his obstruction had long lost its credibility. Of course Erwin would refuse to communicate – there was no way for Erwin to know for certain whether Levi was even breathing over here, despite whatever Jones said to the contrary, let alone be able to discuss something of as much substance and complexity as Titania through middlemen. Levi didn't want to think of himself as just another middleman. Surely his opinion counted for something. Surely Erwin wouldn't dismiss him outright. 

 

*

 

Erwin wondered if he was being obstinate. If his obstruction was borne of ego after all. 

He couldn't say that he would have ever done as Kronos has done. But he understood him. He understood why. The longer he separated Kronos as the man he believed him to be from Kronos as the man as he truly was, the more sympathetic he grew. And he feared that he was beginning to understand why. He feared that in the right circumstances, that in a certain life, he might have done the same. 

Erwin feared, too, the remotest possibility that Kronos was in the right after all. About titans. About Titania. About humanity. Kronos believed in overthrowing the old order with as much untouchable conviction as Erwin had believed in overthrowing Intermipol.

He thought back to his wall-bound counterpart. Erwin recalled growing up with that stone horizon, remembered his counterpart's father there one day and gone the next, until he remembered, because of the childhood switch, that it was Erwin himself losing his father. It was a curious thing to forget. So much was being revealed to them all at once that Erwin had half a mind to think Kronos intended to get his way by merely drowning them in intel. It was an odd problem to have, after so many months of knowing next to nothing.

He regretted knowing so little of his father, knowing only that his lessons had illuminated within him that dogged desire for nothing less than the truth. Surely Kronos, too, in his first incarnation, had a father, and if he had been anything like Erwin knew him to be, he understood even more why Kronos refused to give an inch.

He was running in circles in his own head. He was exhausted.

He kept odd hours. He slept either too much or not at all.

In those still, idle moments before the dawn, he found memories of hissing wires and recruits darting clumsily past wooden targets. 

He found, too, the blinding afternoon light through which Hange paced back and forth as they returned to Erwin with a research proposal nearly as soon as they finished presenting the last. Found the groans rumbling from titans snared with little but cleverly positioned anchors and rope. Even in this world, with all its technology and all its best equipment, capturing a titan without killing it was the kind of lottery few but Hange wanted ever to play.

He even remembered dreaming of Mike consoling his counterpart after his first expedition outside the walls, huddled in the darkest corner of the barracks where Erwin's counterpart - barely fifteen, then - was sure no one would find his trembling limbs and heaving lungs.

He'd dreamed of lazy Sunday afternoons when, no matter how he tried to find it, there was simply no more work to be done. Erwin read as Levi napped with his empty cup cradled in his slackened hands. His counterpart had caught Levi's eye more than once when he was sure he'd been sleeping. The wall-bound Erwin would smile, and the captain wouldn't quite return it, yet never looked away either. Neither said a word. Neither needed to say a thing.

Two days passed without Dragunov's return. Mike fortified the security system based on Dragunov's account of his escape, and then restructured the system once more for good measure. No one could even glance in passing at a Survey agent or structure without Mike knowing when, where, who, how and why. The system was placed on high alert until the man's return - assuming he would return. 

The third day since Dragunov's departure coincided with a major security breech in Atlanta, near one of the bombed bases. Reports identified organized bands robbing cleanup crews and investigators of vital evidence. That they were able to breech heavy security at all suggested that these weren't run of the mill radicals. Any figures caught on camera were covered head to toe. Scans offered no help. This was professional work.

Mike's first, last and only suspect was Dragunov. He flew out that very morning.

Erwin privately thought it unlikely. Neither Dragunov nor Levi would ever be so sloppy. And if Dragunov only stole and sold those security codes, Erwin doubted, too, that he would give them to the first amateur in sight, no matter the size of their purse.

Still, it didn't hurt for Mike to fly out and see for himself. Erwin cast the breech from his mind entirely. The thought of Dragunov misplacing Erwin's agonizingly-earned trust was too much to imagine.

 

  
*

 

Kronos' records weren't difficult to find. Then again, if he wanted to make it an impossible search, he would no doubt have had Levi running around for as long as he pleased. The man was making it abundantly clear how transparent he was willing to be, so it must be a matter of time before Levi discovered them. He wondered if Kronos would split open his chest and present his heart if Levi swore it would convince him.

He knew Kronos couldn't have become what he was and couldn't have done all that he had done without a catalyst that was a little more dear and selfish and personal than these abstract ideals of evolution and truth and righteousness. His father surely played his part in striking the match, but if he and Erwin were anything alike, his father would also have been taken from him when he was young. He couldn't have nurtured that initial flame for long, wouldn't have been around long enough to shield it from the gales of mockery and doubt. There was something else. Something else must power his engine.

Despite all his trips through physical and digital records alike, nothing came close to the wealth of information he found in the Pond itself. The technicians taught him how to use the console with Kronos' blessing, a fact that would never not incense Levi for its cruelty. He could see it. He could touch it. He could pry open the glass and get inside. Yet it would have been about as useful as hopping into an idling bus only to find the driver missing and a dashboard with more bells and whistles than the International Space Station.

What he found inside did a fair job of distracting him. A three-dimensional map at least three meters wide in all directions rose beside the Pond at his prodding and bathed the surroundings in a gentle, thrumming blue. Instead of the familiar clusters of stars and galaxies, the map looked like a cup of clear ocean water, full to bursting with strange little organisms of incomprehensible shapes riding great currents and whorls. 

Each one of those teeming, breathing motes was a universe.

The technicians helpfully offered him a magnetic glove to interact with the display - the others worked so often with the map that they had all long since opted for implants at the tips of their fingers. This must be how Han surveyed universes. This must be why Hange had worked day and night to try and build it.

"Watch this," a technician said excitedly, no doubt one of the newer ones who weren't yet sick of charting the multiverse day and night - though how anyone could get sick of this sight, Levi couldn't imagine. She uncurled her magnetized palm. The field shrunk immediately, dizzyingly, the feeling akin to being propelled upward at a stomach-churning speed. Levi squeezed his eyes shut for the sake of keeping down his last meal, and opened only when the techie yanked on his sleeve. They had moved so far away that he could no longer pick out individual universes but a thick, roiling sea suspended as if in midair. 

"We've only been able to get this far out in the last few weeks," she gushed. "It took years to get the right measurements and this is the closest we've got to-"

"Is that all of them?" Levi asked. He couldn't see anything but that thick sea, suspended around a roiling sphere. 

"Not even close, but, you know, the farther out we go, the less precise the models, but soon we'll be able to-"

She lapsed into jargon soon enough, and though it went in one ear and out the other, Levi let her talk and nodded at all the right points. She reminded him of Hange.

He realized something belatedly.

"They're orbiting," he murmured.

"Well, yeah. Around-"

"Core."

It must be at the very center. Core was the engine. Core was the grail.

This was what Core meant to Kronos. If each universe was paired to no more than two or three others, hell, even ten others, Kronos would have had to have switched from one universe to another in search of Core for more years than Levi knew the number for. He didn't even know if years were applicable measurement of time outside the bounds of a universe. Whether time itself operated in any meaningful way at all.

Maybe he didn't need an answer to his earlier question. Maybe this was enough of an answer. Maybe one didn't need a reason to want to hold in their palms everything that ever was and everything that is and everything that will ever be.

 

*

 

Erwin listened to the tapes of Farlan's visits with Dragunov. He listened to his doubts. He listened to his hopes.

He talked about Kronos. Not in the tight, rehearsed exposition he'd shown Mike. 

How he took his coffee. How he spoke to his patients. How many times Dragunov found him passed out at his desk or in one of the labs from overworking even as he accused his lab operators - with no little self-awareness - of doing the same.

Yet even as Erwin constructed a more honest image of Kronos in his mind, Dragunov took a hammer to his own. Erwin was aware, of course, that the man regarded deeply Kronos' promise of nonviolence, or, at the very least, no unnecessary violence. Dragunov had told him so himself. But it was one thing to say. It was another to see.

"Is it true?" Dragunov asked Farlan in the tapes.

"It couldn't have been anyone el-"

"Don't bullshit me," Dragunov snapped. "If you don't have a hard yes or no then you've got jack shit."

"It was him," Farlan said. "It was his agents who stole the codes, his agents stealing the planes, his agents dropping the bombs-"

"Why?"

Farlan blinked. "Why drop the bombs?"

"Farlan-" He seethed.

"Sorry, sorry. I just thought it was obvious." He spoke carefully. "He wanted to stop us from accessing his bases. By all means. Is that...is that not the kind of man-"

"No. That's not the kinda man he is. Did he- did he evacuate them, at least?"

Farlan inhaled slowly. He was intent on looking everywhere but at Dragunov. "It was...it was a warzone, Levi. Of course he didn't."

Dragunov's rigid shoulders drooped. His head bowed, as if it was suddenly all too heavy. His eyes skirted here and there, as if his body knew before his mind that the fight was over.

"Levi..."

"He promised."

 

Dragunov talked about Erwin. He compared them. Farlan found it especially hilarious that he and Kronos apparently shared the same expression when a specific word escaped them in the middle of composing a draft.

He was observant. He understood. He knew why Erwin mistrusted him. Said to Farlan that he would have been worse in Erwin's place Naturally, Farlan disagreed. Dragunov huffed at that, amused. He grew quiet. 

Dragunov was hollow-eyed in the next recorded meeting, and Farlan, though not allowed to touch him, attempted to comfort him. It was their last meeting before Erwin had at last agreed to hear him.

It was difficult to watch. It had been necessary to place him in isolation and limit his contact even with guards in case more sleeper agents remained, but by the second week, the man was miserable. Though he had all the amenities of a small flat, he refused to sleep. He'd begun losing weight. He twitched at the ghost of physical contact. 

It was easier to justify it then, when Dragunov was just an agent of Kronos. When neither Dragunov nor Kronos were more than the caricatures Erwin had created in his mind.

Guilt froze his blood. He had done that. Erwin had done that to him.

Erwin knew he'd lost any moral high ground since coopting radicals to do his dirty work, but now he felt it anew in the pit of his chest.

He made himself watch all of it. There wasn't more than two hours put together, but it felt as many days long. For the first time, he wished he had more time. He wished he could live, if only to atone for what he'd done to him for the rest of his life. 

He headed back to his room, to one of the officers' quarters in the bowels of the Security hub. Mike had explicitly forbidden him from stepping outside while he was out of the state, and Erwin would rather not get in the way of operations.

He twisted the doorknob.

Erwin didn't remember leaving the door unlocked. Someone was inside. Someone who didn't care about getting caught.

He opened the door and switched on the lights. The room was covered from bed to floor to desk to shelves with folders, papers, photographs, documents and hard drives. And flipping through them on the bed, just as Levi had done when Erwin first saw him that frigid November evening, was Dragunov.

 

*

 

Levi pored through the map. He could spend lifetimes learning about one universe after another and never come close to examining them all, even if they were only those that Kronos visited. 

The map had its limitations. These were, after all, models based on theory and statistics, and portrayed planes and movements so complex that it was a wonder its creators had found a way to design the display with such an intuitive interface. Kronos insisted that he knew as well as Levi who these creators were, that he was merely the caretaker of the blueprint and not, by any means, its inventor. As with everything he said, Levi took that with a lethal dose of skepticism. 

But he had to focus. This wasn't his question to answer. If anyone's, it was Hange's.

Every world Kronos visited possessed an accompanying journal record of his history there. Some were accompanied by scattered notes in just a few lines. Others, by hundreds of thousands of words of data and observations. Nearly every world Levi explored - trying as best he could to select them at random - possessed Titania. Additional notes noted differences in chemical compositions between variations as well as its progression among the populace. 

But that wasn't what drew his eye most. In the visitation notes of every universe Levi passed, certain names reappeared. Again and again. Names like Hange. Names like Mike.

And when they appeared, they weren't alone. They were followed by sobering amendments. 

 

ADF:43852-28362

Mike: Alive. 36. 

 

KJI:238354-74338

Mike: Deceased. 78.

 

He couldn't have fabricated these logs. There were too many. Each one was too unique to have been compiled by some sort of software, or even an armada of writers. His voice was in every line, every word. He described walking along a beach with Nanaba and Mike as he waited for Titania to synthesize in one universe. In another, he stayed an extra few days to make it to Moblit's birthday. They were only a touch less intimate than diary entries. 

But there was one name he couldn't find. Among those familiar names were the names of friends and colleagues, of business partners present and former, of people who, by fate or design or dumb luck, just happened to be a reoccurring presence in Erwin's lives. Levi recognized many of them. Some, according to Kronos' notes, weren't veterans at all in this universe of that one. This Mike was a Persian courier. That Hange ran a coffee shop on the moon. 

But there was no Levi. He searched for days. He wasn't there. Kronos must have left him out. Must have thought that information too sensitive, too volatile for Levi to know. 

Levi wondered for barely a minute whether or not to confront the man about it before wondering, too, if that was Kronos' intent. It was such an obvious omission. It couldn't have been an accident.

"Sir?"

Levi turned sharply. The technician that helped him set up the map days before cleared her throat. "Sorry! Just noticed you were looking for- I mean, maybe I should mind my own business-"

"No. You can help me," Levi said  as she stepped into the map's blue glow. "Where am I?"

"This happens occasionally, just a sec." She darted over to the Pond's console to input something or other. Levi huffed and chastised himself for overreacting. It must be a glitch in the model. 

The technician strode back over and curled her fist to zoom out of the section Levi was investigating. He shut his eyes to mitigate the motion sickness. The speed with which the model pulled out always felt like being pulled out of his skin.

"There they are," she said.

He opened his eyes. The great, roiling sphere was back again. Now, however, the blue haze was interrupted by sparse specs of red.

"What are these?" he asked.

With a bemused look, the technician drew all her fingers to a point and blew up the map until the red spec revealed itself to be a universe.

"We don't usually tag universes universes by individual," she said, flicking her wrist and revealing the visitation log, "It would take too long. Outliers are an exception."

 

ADE:43972-08202

Levi:  Deceased. 

 

"Outliers," Levi repeated. 

"Well, yeah. Cause there are so few of them. Don't wanna make some intern work round the clock to catalogue every- you okay, mister?"

Levi willed the ringing to stop. "Yeah, kid," he said distantly. "Thanks."

When she left, Levi curled his gloved hand. The map pulled out. There were surely a thousand visible universes, yet only one tinged red. He curled his hand again, and again. Now, millions. Billions. Hundreds of billions. Still, a single spec of red rode along the membraneous current like a mote of dust. He kept curling his hand and the map kept pulling out, and still, there was one spec. Just when he was sure there was a hiccup in the system, another dot of red appeared. His hand began to cramp.

He shut his eyes, curled his hand and held it tight to pull all the way out. When he opened them again to that same roiling sphere, he at last saw more. But not many more. At a glance, there was no more than a few hundred. Without the map, he might have even thought the number more than enough. But it chafed knowing for every universe with himself, there was a dizzying number - words like duodecillion began to lose all nuance and meaning to him other than:  _really fucking many_  - with Hange and Mike and anyone else. 

Han had said Core was connected to a googolplex of universes. Eleven billion connections were active - as far as they knew - and the rest, dormant. Levi still didn't have it in him to ask what the hell a googolplex was.

He pulled into each red dot, willed himself to not associate it with a rifle laser, and read through one log after another. He went through them all before lunch.

Levi wouldn't be eating any. His heart hadn't stopped its incessant beat ever since the kid said  _outlier_. 

Levi flagged down the techie on her lunch break. "Hey kid," he said, gesturing to the map, "Why don't I-uh, exist in all these other ones?" 

"Oh, that's not what it means - you do. Or, did."

"Start making sense, kid."

 She shrugged. "Just means Mr. Smith never found you in the others. There are Mikes missing in some universes, a lot of Moblits missing in the AJD-28 region-"

"Don't string me along. Lot more of me missing than anyone else." Something wasn't right. "Was I hiding from him..." he wondered aloud.

"Well...no. But you were always born...well..."

"Spit it out, kid."

She wrung her hands. "Well, um. All our models assume infinite universes. Infinite possibilities."

"Sure."

"And a googolplex is beyond enormous, but it still doesn't come close to infini-"

"I'm aware of what infinite means."

"-ty, so there a ton of variations in each universe," she went on, ignoring him, "But a lot of similarities."

"Like how everyone in our merry gang just happens to be alive at more or less the same time."

"More than half the time, yes-"

"And our names."

"Yes-"

"And our-" Levi stopped. The sphere swirled lazily. "Is this because of Core? Is Core some kinda...some kinda blueprint?"

"Bingo. Just like a copy machine, the, uh, the surrounding universes mess up the details now and again."

Levi stared, disbelieving the almost-bored cadence to her words, as if this was all as obvious as the rising sun. And normal. His head throbbed. "Okay. How old are you? This isn't the least bit ridiculous to you?"

She stared back. In a perfect deadpan, she said to him, "My student loans are six-figures. My landlord's cat steals my socks. Shoving Tulips was canceled before its time. This is as normal as it gets."

Levi crossed his arms. "Fine. Whatever. All this leading somewhere?"

"Well..."

"Well?"

"Sure, uhm. I mean-"

"You look uncomfortable. Why do you look uncomfortable."

"I mean- well, like I said, there are many similarities. Some people will always meet. No matter what. Others will always stub their toe on their fifteenth birthday. And others will be born into- I mean, they..."

"Born into- into what?" Levi asked, though the answer was in his chest, clanging around his ribs.

"Into-"

"Nothing," Levi finished.

The senior technician waved her over. Levi let her go with a hollow thanks for her help. 

He was no stranger to everyone's circumstances. Hange was born to suburban Greek immigrants. Mike was a Queens kid, and Nanaba, Brooklyn. Erwin had been tossed around by the foster system after his father's death. No one knew anything of Isabel's beginnings, and she didn't care to divulge, but Farlan, too, had had a home. The first home Levi had known was the chipped handle of a knife. Hunger was his foster parent.

He didn't survive. 

In all but barely a few hundred universes out of the unpronounceable number that Kronos visited, Levi must have never lived past the proverbial cradle. Kronos must not have found him nor any sign that he existed at all. 

He stilled his trembling hand before it disrupted the map. Levi returned to the red points and looked through each log. Something else stood out.

 

AFE:73649-03794  
Visit Duration: 127 years.

 

BDE:29073-20384

Visit Duration: 97 years.

 

VIO:21593-79853

Visit Duration: 216 years.

 

Levi had seen the global visitation stats on the console attached to the Pond. The average duration of Kronos' stay in a given universe was three months. 

There was no universe with Levi in it that he hadn't stayed in for less than forty years. 

The observation logs in those universes with Levi were also conspicuously absent. Not truncated. Not summarized. Omitted, despite how many orders of magnitude longer he had stayed.

 

*

 

Erwin couldn't recognize him. He was hollow-eyed and thin, as if he hadn't eaten in all the days he'd been gone. His eyes were flat, unseeing. He didn't look at Erwin, hadn't even reacted to his presence. 

Then, he stood. He plucked several letters from the piles he passed almost without looking, as if there was an impeccable order to the chaos. As he opened the door, stacked pages and folders spilled out into the hall. Erwin retrieved them and shut the door behind him.

A week. He had found this in a week.

His voice was low, steady, businesslike, yet with a thread of something underneath that sounded a little like fear.

"Intermipol," he said, handing him one letter. "Iaso," handed him another, "Panacea," handed him another, "D.O.D," handing him the last.

Erwin leafed through them. "What am I looking at?"

"Correspondence between the D.O.D. and Intermipol. Buyout of biological material." Dragunov swiped a folder from under Erwin's feet and handed it to him.

"Description. Case studies," he said, pointing to each page faster than Erwin could follow, "Longevity. Patients. Trials-"

"Titania."

" _Viral_ Titania," Dragunov corrected.

Erwin examined the documents. He frowned. "The Department of Defense. How could it have possessed the virus-"

Dragunov shook his head sharply and pointed just as impatiently at the page again. At a name. Leo Drucker. Levi rummaged through another folder and gave Erwin a copy of the man's passport photo.

"Do I-"

"You don't know him," Dragunov interrupted. His eyes were impossibly sallow. He swallowed hard. "But I do. Did. I know- knew everyone in that city. It was my city, Erwin. On that side, the guy had a kid. Mom gone. Guy worked the docks. Great if they had enough to eat two days in a row."

"What does this have to do with-"

"Kid got sick a lot. Leukemia, it turned out. That woulda been that." Dragunov gathered more pages. "Until the resident guardian angel swooped down. Gave the kid Titania. Kid lived, guy overjoyed, happy ending."

Erwin struggled to catch up. The papers in his hands showed a man who most certainly was not a dock hand.

"This man," Erwin said slowly, beginning to understand, "had a counterpart in Core who was an executive agent within the D.O.D."

"Getting warmer," Dragunov said, looking away. 

"Then, Kronos...to gain access to the DOD, refused to cure her unless-"

"Oh no," Dragunov laughed. "He didn't need to. He just did it. Old Leo was just so out of his mind with joy that he woulda jumped off a bridge if he asked."

Erwin scanned the rest of the papers. "You said you knew Leo."

"That's something Kronos underestimated again and again and again," Dragunov said. "He didn't even bother to convince Leo to change his name, to hide his identity. Didn't think it mattered. Didn't know I knew him. Never said a word to Leo, but I knew him. I know everyone in that city. I know all their names." 

Erwin's heart pounded in his ears. He called him Kronos. Dragunov called him Kronos. He scanned the pages again. "Then these are-"

"Records of Kronos selling the viral Titania to the International Military Police," Dragunov finished. He flashed Erwin a forced, miserable smile. "Surprise."

Sold. Not stolen. Not misplaced. Sold. Kronos lied to him.

To them.

Dragunov passed him to look for something else in the pile. Erwin watched him, watched the bow of his back and the controlled violence with which he shoved papers aside. Kronos lied to him, too.

Wordlessly, Dragunov shoved more documents at him. Erwin could just barely scan one before Dragunov shoved another in his hands. Records of Intermipol agreeing to turn their heads as Kronos agents within the D.O.D. constructed thirteen  gargantuan underground bunkers along the South and Southwestern United States. Records of Intermipol mishandling the viral Titania soon after acquiring it from the D.O.D. Records of Iaso capturing titans and assigning their Panacea arm to study them within the specially constructed Panacea tower, that contract, too, connected to the D.O.D. Panacea records of a sudden uncontrollable growth compromising the structural integrity of the tower. Records of Iaso ignoring the threat.

Almost none of the correspondences were from Kronos agents proper. They had been clever enough, Erwin assumed, to destroy their end of their communications. Iaso and Intermipol, on the other hand, appeared to have stored them in triplicate within their labyrinthine bureaucracy, allowing Dragunov to triangulate the content of correspondences with Kronos agents based on Iaso and Intermipol records. Erwin never imagined he would want to sing the praises of bureaucrats.

Erwin had almost believed him. He had been so close. He admitted it to no one, but he had been ready to switch. If Dragunov returned empty, he promised himself. He would switch.

Dragunov was all but flinging papers and folders at him now. 

Erwin set them aside. "I think-"

"-and here's the translated transcript from the April 13th video conference-" Dragunov muttered, throwing it over his shoulder.

"Wait-"

"-It has the courier's route but not the truck's license plate, that's in another-"

Erwin touched his shoulder and Dragunov flinched, hard. "I'm looking as fast as I can, it's right here-"

"I believe you."

His voice rose as he rummaged furiously. "-I swear, it was right here, there's security footage of it, it was right-"

He didn't think Erwin believed him. Erwin hadn't believed before. He'd refused to even speak to him. 

Erwin knelt by him and reached for him again. Dragunov rolled his shoulder to throw him off. Erwin didn't let him. "That's enough."

"-I haven't even found-"

Erwin took his hands in his own. He wasn't in top form. Dragunov could pull away if he wanted. For a second, it felt like he might. 

"You've done it," Erwin said softly, willing Dragunov to look at him as his eyes darted across the pages, "you've found it. I believe you. Le- I believe you. Please, look at me."

Dragunov's hands shook. "Just let me find it," he mumbled. "I know it's there-"

Erwin let go of one of his hands and slowly, dangerously, cupped his face with one palm. Now, Dragunov looked at him. Now, his free hand stilled. 

"This isn't even- this is nothing," Dragunov said. The tension in him only grew more taut with Erwin's proximity. Erwin drew away.

"He knew. He knew everything," Dragunov laughed.

"What do you mean?"

Dragunov's breathing hitched. "He was playing cat and mouse with Iaso. Iaso knows, Erwin. They know about Titania. Straight from Kronos' agents."

"He plans to sell-"

Dragunov shook his head. "Not to sell it. Kronos never wanted to sell it. He always meant to give it away. He just wanted- wanted Iaso to  _think_  they were getting it. In return he- he convinced- he convinced them to look the other way."

"From what?"

"Panacea. Trinidad. Mexico City. All of it. They have Intermipol's boots in every city. Iaso wrote its checks. Kronos paid em to ditch those checks."

The Intermipol documents that became declassified after its fall confirmed that Iaso slashed Intermipol's budget. But they never confirmed why. 

Erwin frowned. "We assumed Iaso did it to maximize profits. More chaos, more business. Why would Kronos bother to convince them to do something that was in their own favor?"

"To make Iaso think it was getting the better end of the deal. More profit  _and_ Titania? Not that they actually considered selling it themselves. Board held a meeting. Transcript here somewhere. Decided as soon as they get it, its destroyed. Unanimous."

"Why would he go to these lengths? Unless he wanted..." It couldn't be.

Kronos sweet-talks Iaso into squeezing Intermipol. Intermipol squeezes the Survey Corps. The Survey Corps squeezes back. Global economy buckles. Intermipol papers and Severance Package implicate Iaso. Iaso's influence tanks. Survey Corps' favorability rises.

Kronos switches in, develops Titania, and strikes the killing blow. 

He engineered it. All of it. Played Iaso and Intermipol against the Survey Corps to eventually maneuver the Survey Corps to the top. Egret. The Threader.  Even Beckert and Foley, before Foley's betrayal. They had no right at the time to refuse the gifts. To refuse anything that might help them survive an existential threat that owed its beginnings to Kronos himself.

Another thing occurred to him. Kronos could have convinced Iaso to destroy Intermipol. Iaso was never concerned about Intermipol's survival, only that it used its devices and pharmaceuticals in their reintegration centers and named every Intermipol structure after some Iaso executive's son's favorite yacht.

But he didn't. Kronos' deal with Iaso meant that the Survey Corps was destined for a fight for its life. It meant that Erwin had been destined to make the choice between allowing a corrupt Intermipol strain Survey's efforts to not only engage but study titans, or allowing the deaths of millions of people as the world's only global titan slaying forces collapsed at the same time. It meant that Kronos was able to equivocate their choices to convince Erwin that Kronos was like him, that Kronos meant no harm. And it almost worked.

“He engineered this,” Erwin said, as much to himself as to Dragunov. “It was no accident. None of it was an accident.”

Dragunov watched him warily. 

Erwin opened his mouth to speak. Dragunov beat him to it.

“I was wrong.”

 

*

 

“What happens after?”

Kronos leaned back. “After?”

Levi propped his feet on the desk. “You finish the formula. What then?”

“I'll be on my way.”

“No, you won't. You're a perfectionist. You'll stay until the last man gets it, won't you? Wether he wants it or not. You'll force it on us.”

“Should I gather eleven billion permission slips? Lay prostrate and wait for governments and corporations who care more about their own pocketbooks than the lives of their people?”

Levi chewed on the answer. God forbid Iaso even considers that Titania might exist.

“And if someone doesn't want it?"  
Kronos shrugged. "Then they don't get it. Though I think the chance to live to see your family into the next century and a half is a convincing bargain."

"How long, then?' Levi asked.

Kronos placed a hand on his raised ankle. The touch was soft, almost-there, yet all of Levi's attention was momentarily diverted to to the place where Kronos' thumb swept along the bowstring tendon at his heel.

"How long is too long, Levi?"

Levi didn't answer.

*

 

He laughed. It was a small, fake, aborted thing. He wouldn’t look at Erwin. He stood and started pacing. “I thought...I thought he-”

Erwin stood. “Wait-”

“We agreed. No violence. No unnecessary death. Not like this. Never like this.”

“All this started forty years ago. Long before you met-”

“Then he should've told me,” Dragunov snapped. He rounded on Erwin. “Why didn't he tell me? Why didn't y-” He stopped. His hands shook. His palms curled, uncurled. He backed away.

“Well, time's up,” he said with a false bravado that wasn't at all convincing. He still didn't look at Erwin, didn't look at anything at all. “Do whatever you want with me. If I'm so stupid, so fucking gullible that all it takes is a few- a few words and a little smile to-”

“This isn't your fault.”

“Isn't it?" Dragunov looked up at him. "I should have killed him," he said.

Erwin stepped closer. “You didn't know.”

“I should've,” he snapped. 

“I should've,” he said again as his head tipped, as it pushed into Erwin's chest. “I should've killed him,” he murmured, as Erwin wound his arms around him.

 

*

 

"No amount imagined autonomy is worth that kind of suffering."

Levi felt him squeeze. He must not have noticed. "And who are you to decide?”

“No one at all. But I'm in the rare position to do something about it."

“When did all this start?” He pulled away and set his feet down. "When did you start? Why are there no others like you?"

Kronos' eyes clouded over in thought. I don't remember anymore. I've seen so much. I only began recording when I established operations here." He turned to Levi, eyes sharpened. "And I don't see a separation like you do, Levi. I see a commonality, between every instance of myself. And between myself and every instance of every person who has ever lived. We're never as different as we like to pretend."

“Save everyone, save yourself.”

“Something like that.”

“Sounds pretty selfish."

Kronos smiled. “I never pretended otherwise.”

 

*

 

The findings were brought to the rest of the team. Mike was at once shocked that Dragunov would show them contradicting evidence of Kronos and beside himself that he had actually begun to believe him. Hange was quiet. They had wanted it to be true, wanted it to be real more than anyone. But not like this.

Nanaba was furious. The meeting was over for all of five minutes before she dedicated all but reserve teams the world over to search for Kronos' second Pond. Erwin's suggestion to use himself as bait to track him to the Pond was unanimously shot down. 

They were at last all unanimously, officially, in opposition to Kronos. There were no more philosophical discussions of morality or right and wrong. Kronos was an enemy of the Survey Corps.

Yet privately, Erwin boiled. Allowing Kronos to cross over would legitimize all the suffering he created. But opposing him meant that all of it would have been for nothing. There was no easy answer. There was no right answer. By an inch, Erwin opposed him - this world deserved autonomy, deserved the right to choose its own fate separate from the games of a puppetmaster.

Yet Erwin, too, had pulled his share of strings to topple Intermipol. And he did it knowing the suffering he would be party to, just as Kronos had. 

Mike left the video conference to finish dealing with the Atlanta security breach before heading home, and Nanaba left to coordinate the search effort. Hange remained, lost in their thoughts.

“Hange?”

They smiled, and there was something melancholy to it, something rueful.

“I forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

"They clicked their tongue. "If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

Dragunov leaned against the door, waiting. Erwin hummed. “I think I forgot, too,” he said. He turned to leave.

“Wait,” Hange said. “You've gotta tell me something, now. I floated this with Mike and Nan but we got nowhere. We need your input.” They were clipped, and sounded almost apologetic. 

Erwin frowned. “What is it?”

Hange glanced at Dragunov. “We don't have the personnel or the budget to work on Titania and a Pond at the same time. These aren't side-projects. This isn't like reverse-engineering the Threader, Erwin. These are big fuckin' deals. We can't split our attention and expect to get either done in our lifetimes.”

Erwin hadn't anticipated this problem, yet it was an obvious one.

Choosing Titania would mean sacrificing the possibility that Levi could ever be switched again, if that itself was even possible. Even if they found Kronos' Pond, it would no doubt be highly guarded, and there was no guarantee it would survive an earnest firefight.

 

*

 

“He isn't responding,” Kronos said. “And we're running out of time.”

Levi knew. It was all he could think about. It was all he attempted to understand. Erwin wasn't like this. He would at least try to communicate. He had done it before, had sought it before from Egret. Something was different now.

That he wouldn't even use Jones as an in-between meant one of two things. Either he was in no state to influence this op, or he was in fact a part of it and refused to communicate on principle. But that didn't help Levi. He didn't know why. He needed to know if Erwin knew something he didn't.

But maybe he didn't. Maybe Erwin's lack of communication was itself a message.

  
*

 

But if Erwin chose to develop the Pond, if he choose Levi, it meant abandoning Titania. A global panacea. Cobbling together the stabilizing agent and completing the formula from the testimonies of Kronos' agents would take decades at the very least, so if their attention was split between both projects, they would never even come close. It may take a century. It may take more. Erwin wondered if Kronos wasn't wrong to suggest that humanity didn't have as much time as it imagined. That too many were hurting for the old order to remain untouched. Developing the Pond meant abandoning humanity for no immediate benefit but the possibility of recovering one man.

Levi had waited for him. Levi had followed his orders and waited for the Severance Package to drop. Levi hadn't abandoned him. Levi never abandoned him.

“Don't drag this out,” Dragunov said. Erwin felt his eyes on his back. Erwin couldn't look at him. 

Hange watched them. “If you need to think about it some mo-”

“No,” Dragunov said, striding forward, and this time, he made sure Erwin could see him. He looked at Erwin, then, eyes hard. “He doesn't.”

 

  
*

 

“My agents could liberate Dragunov without the leadership even knowing it before the switch is done,” Kronos said. “It would be another blow of confidence, but the advantage of having you on the other side to try and convince Erwin could more than make up for it.”

“What do you recommend?” Levi asked wryly, and by Kronos' knowing half-smile, he knew his answer to be no different than the last time Levi asked.

Levi knew the answer. He'd known the answer from the start.

 

*

 

“Abandon the Pond,” Erwin said. “Focus on Titania.”

 

*

 

“Forget about me,” Levi said. “Focus on Titania.”

 

*

 

The doorknob rattled. Hard knocks came soon after. Two raps, sharp. Low on the door, near the knob. Then another pair, louder.

“Last warning,” Erwin heard. “I can be in there in two seconds. One, if you dare me.”

Erwin's head leaned back against the cool tile. He didn't open his eyes.

The lock clicked open, as promised. Erwin felt Dragunov take a seat to his right.

“Get your pity-party a bouncer, old man.”

Erwin 's lips twitched upward, but it was short-lived. Dragunov didn't speak again, not for a while. He shouldn't think he needed to be here. Or to be around Erwin at all. He was free.

Erwin swallowed. "You don't have to-"

"Shut up."

Erwin inhaled sharply as something touched his jaw. Dragunov was pressing a napkin to the cold sweat racing past Erwin's temple and down his neck. That same uncontrollable fury oozed back. He shouldn't be doing this. He should hate him. He should hate him a thousand times over for how Erwin treated him.

"Just say it," Dragunov said suddenly. "Ma never told you not to back up your shit?"

Erwin stared at a point on the far wall. “I abandoned him," Erwin said before he could stop himself. "After everything he's done-”

“He's a big boy. Knows what he signed up for."

"None of us one knew it could ever come to this-"

"But he never ditched. Did he?"

"No, nev-"

"There you go."

He wasn't getting it. "Of all the people to-"

“I said I know what I signed up for," Dragunov snapped. "He. I meant he."

Dragunov had slipped before. But this time, even he looked surprised. Erwin didn't know if it was right to ask, didn't know if it was any of his business whether or not it meant anything more than it was. They didn't speak again for some time.

Until Dragunov started again. “I knew I would never be the most important thing to him. Joined him anyway.”

“Why?” Erwin asked, though he knew the answer.

“Wanted to. Felt like the right thing."

Erwin opened his eyes and turned to him, turned to a profile more familiar to him than his own. The jut of his chin. the arch of his nose.  

"Does this feel like the right thing?" Erwin asked.

Dragunov turned to him, unreadable. His perpetually knotted brow slackened as he considered Erwin, roved over his face, his neck, his mangled right ear. His hand rose in starts, slowly, hesitantly, until something in Erwin's face reassured him.

But he didn't touch his ear, as Erwin thought. His hand traced something on his neck instead, and it had been so long that Erwin couldn't imagine what had drawn him there until the slow drag of a nail brought him back to muddy knees and hissing blood and a black titanium blade at his neck.

"I dreamed, too," Dragunov said, lips nearly unmoving and voice so low that Erwin could just barely make him out. "Dreamed he didn't hold back."

 

When Erwin was sure he could stand without buckling, he shifted to stand. Before he knew it, Dragunov was on his feet and helping him up. 

As Dragunov walked him out and toward his room - since then cleared of the records he'd found and delivered to Nanaba - with a hand on his arm and another at the small of his back, Erwin said, "I'm sorry it wasn't a warmer welcome."

"Doesn't matter. Woulda done the same in your place. I forgive you or whatever."

"No. Not after everything I-"

"Don't tell me who i can or can't forgive."

"I don't deserve-"

 **"** No one deserves shit. No one's promised anything. Not you. Not me. Not Kronos."

Dragunov let him go when he was sure Erwin could go it alone, and Erwin assumed  he meant to leave when he turned with his hands shoved  in his pockets, but he hesitated. And then Dragunov's hands were on his, and something cool and sleek and awfully familiar was slipped onto his finger.

It was the ID ring. It was Erwin's ring.

Erwin couldn't speak for a long moment. “How- how did you-”

Dragunov shrugged. “Not the toughest thing to find.”

The ring's holo blipped open once Erwin rolled his thumb against the rim. It even worked. It had never been tampered with. He switched it off.

Erwin couldn't believe it. "Thank you, I-" He wanted to say more, had to say more, but he didn't know how, didn't know what.

Dragunov shrugged and rolled his eyes in a show of indifference. Erwin caught his hands moving back to his pockets. He narrowed his eyes.

"You have his ring, too."

Dragunov froze. Erwin was almost sure he imagined it, but Dragunov shrugged again, and he took Levi's ring out of his pocket. It had been confiscated by the Survey Corps when Dragunov was first brought in. 

"Replaced it with a dud when I broke out. Didn't tell Mike. Just didn't....I don't know. Probably weird to wear it."

Dragunov must know. If not, then he might guess, must guess that they were never just security I.D.'s. 

"It's yours," Erwin said. "Do whatever you want with it."

 

  
*

 

"This isn't the first time someone's called you Kronos."

Kronos didn't move from his place by the broad glass panes in his office. Evening snuck up on them. City lights flashed on the lapels of his jacket and smeared blindingly against his titanium hand. 

"It isn't."

Levi pulled back a chair with an obnoxious scrape against the floor and fell into it. "Weird that it's everywhere. Mike's universe. Hange's. Like it's just one of things that...carry over."

Kronos hummed. "Some things do repeat across universes."

The man came here alone, most nights. Maybe it was easier to breathe up here.

"Things," Levi said, "Names. People."

Kronos' head turned a fraction to the right.

"Yes," he said mildly.

Levi didn't have the patience for verbal snares the way Erwin did.

"Must get boring, staying in one place for 216 years," Levi said. "Must have been a lotta nice beaches."

Kronos was still. Unnaturally so.

"Maybe the nightlife?" Levi asked, leaning back lazily and determined to have his fun."Nah, you don't strike me as the type. Must be the people."

Kronos turned slowly. Despite the dark, his backlit profile looked inordinately pained. "Levi-"

"Two-sixteen...shit," Levi said, giddy at the man's reaction, the strongest he'd ever seen. "Must mean you used Titania on yourself in those worlds and then just...stayed. Hey, does that mean you basically killed the Erwins who were born there? Or, no, more like robbed them. Made 'em switch into some dying universe while you fucked off with their bodies for two fucking centuries." 

Levi's grin infected his inflection. Kronos still said nothing, still did nothing. His head was bowed, his eyes fixed on a point on the floor. It stoked something in Levi, goaded him to meanness. Kronos looked like every word flayed him. Levi wanted to know why. 

"You asked me a question," Levi said. "You asked how long is too long."

Levi stood and strode to Kronos' side. Only when he stopped no more than a foot away from the man did Kronos look up, look at him. With resignation. But also, with an air of inevitability. He looked like he had been expecting this. 

"I think two centuries," Levi said, watching him closely, "is one century and ninety-nine years too long."

A drop of silence passed between them as Kronos waited for him to speak again. When he saw that he wouldn't, he spoke in a voice so small that Levi couldn't believe it was coming from the man in front of him. "Of course."

Levi's brows dropped, along with the rest of his patience. "Spill. No batting your lashes out of this one."

"I should have told you."

"No shit."

"I wanted to."

"But you didn't."

Kronos' jaw worked. His lips parted hesitantly. "I was afraid."

"Afraid?" Levi scoffed. "You've got your fingers in more universes than "- _there have ever been motes of dust in every beam of light on your world and mine"_ , and you're shaking in your boots about little old me?"

This wasn't fun anymore. Kronos wasn't fighting back. He was supposed to fight back. It occurred to Levi that Kronos wanted this.

"You didn't hide any of it," Levi said.

"No."

"You wanted me to find it all. You wanted me to put two and two together. Wanted this dressing down, too, I bet. Got a flogger somewhere in that desk?"

"I couldn't-" Kronos started, and then his breath hitched, and Levi wasn't sure anymore that this was an act.

"I couldn't make myself tell you."

The admission wasn't itself surprising. Levi could have guessed. But it was different. Kronos was letting him see not just the pristine, polished parts of him and his empire anymore. He was letting Levi was seeing the man. 

Kronos watched him. "But you needed to know."

"Two hundred years. Would've figured you'd get sick of me."

"No," Kronos said immediately, harshly. 

Levi stared, taken aback.

Kronos sighed. Softer, he said, "No. Never." He took a step toward the glass. His hands were clasped behind him, fingers wire-taut. "There's so little of you, but so...so much to you. In some worlds, your demeanor or your beliefs or your words are softer, in others, harsher-"

 **"** Well, I did kill an instance of you in some of those. What happens after that, again?"

Kronos turned to look at him. "I die."

Levi rolled his eyes. "Really."

"Really."

Levi gave him a disbelieving frown. "So, all these worlds. All these possibilities. And you've never kicked the bucket."

"When you switch as much and as often as I have, you recognize patterns. Whether or not you seek them out. They come to you. You come to know what to say. What not to say. And when. Where to go. Where never to go."

"No freak accidents? Ever?"

"There were close calls." Kronos stilled for a moment, as if trying to decide whether to elaborate. "Before doing a single thing post-switch, I would install a chip in my chest designed to monitor my breathing and heart rate. If one or the other stops for too long, it releases a Triazolam-based serum - similar to your Halcion - directly into my bloodstream. As long as the brain stem is intact and the brain itself still firing, I can switch out in time."

Levi's head spun. "You...."

"And if I happened to land in a less technologically advanced world, paying a personal guard to do the same with a needle does the job just as well."

"Ever had to do any of that?"

"Yes." 

Levi thought back to his dreams. Surely those shots would've killed Kronos instantly. But it must never have been Kronos in those dreams at all. They were all instances of Erwin. 

This was the only universe of this era where an instance of him refused to kill an instance of Erwin. And it was the only one where the shot would have actually mattered. 

It may not be an accident. Kronos has been around long enough that he would have been able to manipulate Dragunov to do anything at all. 

"No," Kronos said when Levi said as much. "With other things, other people, yes. I won't deny it. But you- you think two centuries is so unbearably long, and I don't blame you. You have no frame of reference but your own thirty-odd years. But when several billion centuries pass between the times I can see you again..." Kronos, for the first time that Levi has known him, was at a loss for words. 

"You alone surprise me," Kronos finished.

"Me, or Dragunov?"

"You. Every instance of you."

Levi crossed his arms. "I'm guessing you like the "softer" ones a little more."

"No," Kronos said, eyes growing unfocused, distant. "But it is nice. To find you in a world that's kinder to you. To see you smile freely. To see what you can do when the world gives you a chance."

"I don't need chance."

"No. But you don't need a firm bed and hot meals and steady shelter either. Not unless you desire safety. Warmth. Stability. I think everyone needs that."

Levi didn't know what to say. There was too much to digest, too much to understand. Kronos watched him for a moment before politely looking away and heading back to his desk. Levi was more than familiar with that desk. One night, it was slick with blood. The next, overflowing with tulips. Cream. Commitment.

He didn't look back, but he heard Kronos take a seat.

Levi made himself turn around. Only slivers of light lit the office. They slashed across Kronos' face, across the gold in his hair, across a curved nose and full lips and worried brow. Kronos leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.

"You did lie to me," Levi said. Kronos looked up, brows raised.

"You said you saw yourself in all these people you want to save so much," Levi said. "You said you were selfish."

"I-"

"You don't see yourself in them." Levi strode forward. Kronos leaned back as Levi walked into his space, and stopped between his thighs.

"You see me."

He couldn't believe him before. He couldn't understand how the man would go to such lengths despite all his noble and abstract odes to freedom and evolution. He wasn't superhuman. He wasn't God. Levi couldn't understand why anyone would condemn himself to an eternity of liberating people he knew nothing about, worlds he has no stake in, and for no personal gain. He made no attempt to spread his name. He acquired no material wealth. He used all his hours and all his days to develop Titania and then left to start all over again.

But not always. Sometimes, he didn't leave. Sometimes, he stayed. And the universes where he stayed and the universes where Levi survived always seemed to coincide. 

"Erwin," he said, and Kronos had nowhere to turn to hide his shock at the name before Levi went on. "How long will you stay?"

They were so near that Kronos needed only to whisper. 

"As long as you want."

 Just like that, Levi understood something else. Kronos hadn't even attempted to shift the blame, to even suggest that it could have been those instances of Levi who had convinced him to stay.

Levi couldn't believe him before. Levi believed him now.  

  
*

 

"He's seen too much," Dragunov said. "He's lost perspective. Everything is a game to him. Everyone is a piece in it."

They were at it again. Not a day passed before they were back to their entrenched positions.

Erwin was beginning to sincerely doubt that he was any different. He had sacrificed lives knowingly, and without their consent. He had used radicals. The only difference between him and Kronos was scale. 

"I'm the same."

"Do you think he wants to give it to everyone?" Dragunov asked. "Unconditionally? Murderers? Mobsters? No. He plans to be judge, jury and executioner. He thinks he's seen so much, thinks he can tell right from wrong, thinks there's a line and he knows it, only him. How biblical. He thinks he's God. Hell, with Core, he might as well be."

Erwin remembered this talk with Mike.

"Isn't he?" Erwin asked, more to gauge Dragunov than out of sincere belief. 

"No. He's one guy with enough guilt for a million. It does things to a person. He'll never be convinced otherwise. Erwin, if he switches here, its too late. He has thousands of sleeper cells, tens of thousands. Do you think for a second that he'd leave Core to chance? You think he wouldn't just have you killed the second you're switched so that you're out of the picture for good? You don't matter to him. You know who you've been leaving out entirely in all your debates? All this talking, and someone's always missing from the table."

He couldn't mean Kronos. No, he was at the head of the proverbial table. Then who-

Of course.

"The people."

"Don't make his mistake. Don't decide shit like this like you've got any more right than anyone else on this shit rock to decide how you get to live."

"Its not that simple," Erwin said. "We can't just open the floor to something like Titania. Especially if there's the slightest chance someone with more money and more power and more visibility can control everything from narrative to production and who knows what else." He sighed. "Like me."

"You're not him."

"Haven't I been sacrificing people - agents, soliders, civilians - for years?"

"You did it because if you hadn’t, a lot more people would've died. You did it because you had to. Kronos didn't have to introduce the viral Titania. He didn't have to play five dimensional chess with Iaso and Intermipol and whoever the hell else. He didn’t have to force this on all those worlds. He didn’t do it because he had to. He did it because he wanted to."

Erwin recalled the Erwin from the walls. That was a man who had to do it. His situation was leagues more dire than anything Erwin has ever seen. Erwin wasn't forced to buck Intermipol. There must have been another way.

"You're wondering if you really had to do the things you did."

Dragunov rolled his eyes at Erwin's guilty silence.

"I've seen Intermipol's files, and so have you," Dragunov said. "You and I, we know what they said among themselves, and what they said to everyone else, and that Venn diagram doesn't fucking touch, Erwin. You starved a parasite."

"And everyone else."

 

 

*

 

Levi followed the blinking window.

He lost the agents tailing him as he passed a man in the shadow of an underpass. Black slacks, grey jacket, black hoodie, grey boots. An identical ensemble to his own.  As he passed into the shadows, the man walked out of them. Levi turned his jacket and hoodie inside out to its blue and white sides, respectively, and stripped the black and white material from his grey jeans and black boots. After a few minutes of loitering, he walked out and went on his way.

He took certain streets over others, but not from firsthand experience. It was something he couldn't name. It was an intuition he'd never known. It didn't feel like deja vu anymore.

Beckert grunted in greeting when he scaled the flights to her hideaway. Levi watched Kronos' agents tail his double from a cracked, faded window.

Beckert yawned. "Never thought you'd let Foley keep his nuts, let alone let him help you."

"He's just his counterpart," Levi muttered. He moved away from the window.

"So you still see them as separate."

Levi frowned. "Don't you?" 

Jones had said something about people thinking of their counterparts as parts of themselves. Levi dismissed it immediately. Some new age nonsense, he thought. Of course they were different. They had to be.

"Dunno," she said, sprawled on a ratty sofa and rubbing her legs through her jeans. His eyes followed the movement. The lower calves. The right knee. The left big toe. He had shot her counterpart there. Those were the spots. He was sure of it.

"Beckert..."

"Hey man, I don't know shit. You come here and I tell you whatever you wanna know, but this is like, a couple dozen PhDs beyond me, alright?"

"Your legs."

"I have legs, yes."

"You- you've been- every time I've been here, you..."

She cocked her head. "What? Never heard of phantom pains?"

"From what?" he asked, fearing the answer.

Her face darkened. "You fucking with me? I give you dirt on this city, dirt on the tower, dirt on K-"

"No! I don't- I don't know what- what?"

She stared. Then, slowly, agonizingly slowly, she gaped. "Oh."

"Oh?"

"I, um. Must've forgot. To tell you. I mean, I thought you knew, but I-"

"Tell me what?"

Beckert snapped her gum. "Um. That was me. I was a switch. I was born here, but switched into Core for three years to make sure Core Smith survived. Switched back and forth every few months to soften the callous. Egret switched me back right before making Core-born Beck twist her own screw in that cell. Not a big fan of that decision, personally."

That was the understatement of the year. It was why she had left Kronos' employ. 

“Then how have you been giving me intel less than three years old? If you've been away all this-”

Beckert sighed long-sufferingly. "Have you...not been feeling it? At all? Like you know things you shouldn't? See things and remember them somehow, even though you swear you never saw them before?"

Levi's heart hammered. He had. And it was getting worse.

"Long switches are a bitch," Becket said. "Sure, between me and Core Beck, I was the one with the training and the instruction and yada yada, so sure, it made sense to put me on the op instead of convincing some recent ad marketing grad to like, suddenly join a paramilitary anti-titan group. But coming back's the hard part."

"I'm getting his memories,” 

"And losing your own."

Levi's blood chilled. "What? But I remember-"

"Well, yeah. Been less than a week. Stay here a month, and get back to me."

"How...why-"

"Same reason you all started dreaming when you and Core Smith met. Multiverse throwing a tantrum, trying to clean up your mess." Beckert blew a bubble.

The intuition, the deja vu. They weren't accidents. Levi wasn't imagining it.

But he never imagined he could forget Core. He couldn't. He had nothing else. He couldn't forget.

Beckert's bubble popped. "Better start writing shit down if you're planning to stay."

 

*

 

"Your aim."

Dragunov looked up. They were sifting through copies of the records Dragunov had found to look for clues to the Pond's location. 

Erwin hadn't realized he'd said it aloud. He looked up at Dragunov from across the desk. 

"I always wondered. All four of us dreamed, but only three of us felt any physical symptoms. That we felt like sharing, in any case.“

Dragunov listened intently, so Erwin went on.

"Mike's olfaction was extraordinary. And since Hange's counterpart had Titania, so did Hange."

"Huh. Bet they miss it. You?"

Erwin smiled wryly. "I wasn't as lucky. My counterpart lost an arm. Soon, I couldn't even feel mine."

Dragunov's eyes darted to his right arm. 

Erwin watched him. "When we questioned you, you said you did wet work for close to fifteen years."

"I did."

Levi hadn't. He'd run with the Silvers. For all their extrajudicial activities, assassinations were exceedingly rare for them. He had excellent aim of his own, of course, but Erwin had never known him to aim for the head. He'd gunned down more than his share of radicals, but he had ever only aimed for the feet, the legs, the lower torso. 

Erwin unlocked a drawer and pulled it open. Dragunov's eyes darted between Erwin and the folder he withdrew. Under sheaths of coroner's forms was a page with a simple drawn contour of the human body with little else but the face filled in. He turned the folder around for Dragunov to see.

There was a single hole between the eyes.

Dragunov glanced at it before lifting it to see the photograph below, of Nick Foley.

He inhaled sharply and shook his head. "I wasn't there. I didn't dream this. I didn't do this, I swear."

"I know. I don't know how these...abilities or physical attributes transfer, but I know Levi couldn't have done this. He would have never aimed for the head. Never would've risked it."

"So without me, he would've aimed for the gut or something. And Foley could've lived to give a statement. To confess and save you all months of-"

"No. Without you, I might not have survived."

Dragunov looked up at that. He looked like he desperately wanted to speak. He bit his lip instead and looked away.

Suddenly, he smiled. He looked up, leaned back in his chair.

"Your Levi ever tell you why he calls me Dragunov?"

Erwin stilled. No. He never had.

Dragunov took his silence for an answer. 

Levi must have seen it in his dreams, Dragunov told him. Must have seen the rifle with the name carved on the barrel. Strange, that a Russian gun would exist in a universe that didn't possess the language.

"When I got out of that hospital, I had to relearn the language, the culture. Had to learn how to call a shitting cab. Carved the name there because I never really bought it. That everything before the crash was some fever dream. I couldn't have made it all up. I couldn't have made up Isabel and Farlan."

Dragunov shook his head. "Sisters handed me a nice contract. I tail Kronos. Kronos hires me under their noses. By the time he told me what he did, I wasn't even surprised. Not about the multiverse part. That shit took months to sink in. But I knew. All that time, I knew it had to be real. And it was."

So when Levi dreamed of the gun, it must have been a symbol of violence to him, of death. Maybe he thought it would demean him to call him that. 

"No," Dragunov said when Erwin said as much. "It reminded me that what I had was real. That Farlan and Isabel were real. Shit, out of all the names he could've chosen, he found the one I hate least."

 

Erwin looked up some time later.

"Does Kronos know what we call him?"

"Yeah."

"How does he feel about the name?"

Dragunov gave him a long look. "I don't know, Kronos. How does it feel?"

 

*

 

Not one morning passed before Levi remembered more of another man's memories and clutched at the fraying ends of his own.

He was beginning to lose sight of whether he met Isabel in an empty train car or on a curb. He jostled his mind for more associations, more images, and he just barely recalled the name of the underpass in Cyrillic before he was sure that it was the right memory.

He remembered Kronos, remembered the words that compelled Dragunov to stand down, remembered the gleam of his eyes in Dragunov's cross-hairs. 

 

 

*

 

A captured titan in Shanghai was attempting to speak. They were sent the recording. Hange was on a flight before Nanaba was even aware of the situation. 

 

"Hey."

Erwin stopped the recording. Dragunov watched him over the laptop. He placed a cup on the desk and rounded it. Erwin didn't think to hide what he was watching.

Dragunov frowned at the security footage. "You know, you can just. Ask again. Unless you get off to watching me like this."

"No," Erwin said immediately. Maybe he should've asked. He couldn't bring himself to.

He had been watching the portion of Dragunov's questioning where Mike asked, prompted earlier by Erwin, what he knew about The Ring safe house. The very safe house in which Levi had switched, in which a counterpart of Levi said to Erwin of Kronos in no uncertain words: 

 

_He doesn't belong here._

 

Dragunov had denied it, then.

"You don't believe me," Dragunov said now.

Erwin couldn't meet his eye. "I want to."

Dragunov reached over and hit play. They listened to Dragunov's answer for a few minutes before the questioning moved on. Erwin shut it off.

"That was months before we locked with you," Dragunov said, parroting what he said in the recording. "It was another instance of me in that safe house. Not me."

"I suppose it's just...telling, maybe," Erwin said.

"Yeah? What's it telling you?"

Erwin was suddenly aware of the man's closeness. He had leaned closer to watch the footage and hadn't yet moved away. 

"I suppose," Erwin said, heart beating wildly for no reason he could understand, "that Kronos must have mistepped so spectacularly in whichever universe that instance of Levi came from that the first thing he could think to do was to tell me that."

*

 

He recalled Kronos as he was when Dragunov joined him. How despite all his tightly controlled movements all his rehearsed lines, he snuck glances that Dragunov was more than aware of, glances that Levi recognized  to be nervous, to be seeking reassurance that Dragunov was on board, that the man he'd waited to see for half an eternity would believe him. That he would stay a while a longer. 

And he remembered when Dragunov professed something more than loyalty, how Kronos' hands shook when they brought the man's palm to his lips, how twisted his brow when he realized he might actually have this again.

He remembered something else. He remembered a familiar laugh. He remembered red hair.

 

*

 

"You met in your apartment."

“We did.” Erwin said. He supposed it was something of an open secret. Mike had been beside himself when Erwin told him. Hange must have laughed for days. Nanaba slipped locksmith's catalogues in his mail for weeks.

Dragunov propped his feet up on the desk as Erwin sorted through Iaso's files. “Your sink was unbearable. Didn't even have cleaning powder. Wasn't sure a person even lived in that matchbox.”

Erwin frowned. Dragunov couldn't have known that. He couldn't have made that up. He wasn't looking at Erwin, yet he stayed and planted his feet on that desk as if they were held there by force. He knew this stance, this expression. Dragunov wanted to tell him something. He didn't know how.

“How do you know this?” Erwin asked gamely.

Dragunov laughed humorlessly. After a few false started, he said, “I heard this could happen. Didn't believe it. Didn't think it'd happen be this quickly, either.”

“What could happen-”

“I didn't know about the ring," Dragunov interrupted. He spoke fast, as if the words would disappear if he didn't get them out fast. "But I remembered it. You touched your ring finger on that pier,” he said of the day he was released, “And it just...it just came to me. Not the memory of a dream I had or a vision but an actual memory. As if I was there, as if I was looking through his eyes but it was more real than a dream and I can't be dreaming anyway because I'm switched but - but I remember.”

Erwin's ears rang. "You-”

"I thought it was a joke. I thought those techies were pulling my leg, Erwin, you know how they are." He breathed heavily. 

“How much do you remember?”

“Pieces. Just...it just comes to me. I can't control it."

"Does that mean Levi-"

Dragunov's expression changed dramatically. His brows unknotted, his jaw slackened. Like a cut string, all tension was gone from his body.

"That means," Dragunov finished, "Levi will remember mine."

Put on the spot, Erwin would assume something like that would have felt like a severe breech of privacy. Especially for a person as private as Levi and Dragunov.

"You don't sound worried," Erwin said carefully.

"No. If he remembers," Dragunov said, "then we've got a chance."

 

*

 

Farlan threw on his coat. "They're pulling me out to Chicago. Eaglewood sensors are either busted or those titans from Archer Heights are still on the move. I tried to get someone else on it, but-"

Isabel crossed her arms. "You're forgetting something."

Farlan looked over her shoulder, then over his own. "Course!" He said a little too loudly. "Promised I'd give you your charm-"

"Not so loud."

"Okay, okay," Farlan whispered as he crouched and fixed the "charm" to Isabel's leg, a retractable key shaped like a ladybug. "You know which side-exit to use, yeah?"

"Yes-"

"It won't trigger an alarm but you gotta overload the cameras first-"

"I know-"

"Don't stay away too long-"

"I know-"

"Levi's usually in the Security Hub but he leaves every third or fourth day to get something from Lily's so that's when-"

Isabel shoved him lightly. "Go, Mr. Archer Heights."

"Just don't..." He stood and ran his hands through his hair anxiously. "I know you wanna see him so just...be careful."

 

*

 

Days passed with no response. Jones was still in deprogramming. All additional messengers were captured, questioned, and held indeterminately. 

Levi felt a cool hand on his nape. He fought a shiver. 

“I sincerely intended to switch you back," Kronos said apologetically.

It was sinking in. He'll never see him again. A titanium thumb stroked the hairs at his nape. A reminder. 

“I know," Levi said.

 

*

 

"You don't have to-"

Dragunov slapped him lightly on the shoulder as he pulled him off the tile and walked him to his bed. Erwin may have dozed off in there.

Erwin frowned. "I haven't finished- I'm in the middle of-"

"You know," Dragunov said before shoving him back down. "You've got pretty shit friends. Been waiting for someone to remind you that you might wanna do something other than play secretary in your last...how long do you have? One week? Two?"

"It's not that dire-" Erwin muttered, moving to sit up again.

Dragunov leaped lithely onto the bed and planted his forearms and all his weight against Erwin's chest. Erwin huffed, grinning despite the indignity. He couldn't angle his elbows to prop himself up at this angle. He was trapped. 

Dragunov shrugged. "I can do this all night."

Erwin dizzied at the low tenor of his voice, at the innuendo. He hummed and gave up the fight, moving his hands to Dragunov's sides. "Is that right?" he asked.

Dragunov valiantly resisted moving as Erwin's fingers passed up his sides, pressing lightly until Dragunov's breath hitched at the tickling, as he started squirming, mouth pressed tight to cage stray gasps and hands grasping uselessly at Erwin's front. 

"Alright!" he yielded at Erwin's wince after having kneed him in the hip. Erwin let up and laughed softly, and that seemed to reassure him. Dragunov braced his weight away from Erwin's chest, a weight Erwin missed. 

His hand shot to cover Dragunov's before it left his chest, the both of them breathing heavily and dizzy with the high of breaking the last of each other's walls. 

Dragunov's hand moved beneath him, just so, and it was as natural as breathing to twine their fingers.

Erwin froze. He shouldn't have done that. Some walls were meant to stand.

He tried to pull away, but Dragunov's fingers had already wrapped around his own.

"I'm sorry," Erwin said. "I don't know why I did that." He pulled.

Dragunov squeezed, keeping him in place as he shot him a knowing look. "Yeah, you do. You've been doing it a lot."

Casual, thoughtless touches, aborted when Erwin remembered who Dragunov was, and who he wasn't. A pat on the shoulder, a hand at his back. He had no right to touch him as if he knew the first thing about him, appearance and name be damned.

Erwin turned away, mortified. 'I didn't- I didn't mean to..."

"You're not in the best position to pretend right now."

"Pretend," Erwin echoed.

"Pretend you don't want something."

Erwin shook his head. "There's nothing-"

"Don't lie to me."

Erwin couldn't understand how Dragunov could be the picture of calm while Erwin struggled to breathe. Dragunov wasn't wrong, but he wasn't right either. Erwin did want. But he had no idea what it was he wanted. 

"I don't-"

"Yes you do."

"He and I, there was nothing. We were never-"

"I remember how you looked at him. I remember The Ring. I remember the night of the film." 

Erwin couldn't speak.

Dragunov loosened his grip. Erwin drew away. Dragunov's hand remained on his chest. "Only thing that changed is you're too tired to hide it. Or just can't find a reason to."

"It's not fair to him."

"Didn't you say there was nothing?"

"I don't know, it's- it's not right. It's his body."

"I'm sure he won't mind. Besides, he isn't coming back. It's mine now."

"It's not fair to you either."

"I get to decide that."

Erwin said nothing. He wasn't sure what he was afraid of, only that there was no time for this, never time for any of this. Sure that even if there was, he didn't deserve it. He should be cataloging Iaso files. He should be making himself useful until he couldn't anymore.

Dragunov's hand roved aimlessly over his chest. The movement grounded him, broke him out of his thoughts. A finger caught on a button, another swept under his collar. 

Dragunov moved closer, blocking the dim lamplight, forearms bracketing Erwin's head.  "Tell me to stop."

Erwin's heart thundered in his ears. He opened his mouth to speak. Dragunov froze, waited.

"Will you pretend?" Erwin asked. 

Dragunov turned a little, and their noses might have brushed. "Will you?" 

Erwin slipped a hand into the hair at his nape and pulled. Dragunov's mouth was soft against his, slackened in surprise, but only for a moment. His hands caged Erwin's face, palms hot against his face and his jaw as he pressed a little too breathlessly, bit a little too hard. Erwin smiled against him. It was sloppy. It was perfect.

Erwin's other hand snaked over Dragunov's rod-iron back. He stroked reassuring paths over the blades of his shoulders and the length of his spine until the iron began to bend, until he arched his back and lay flush against him.

He rested his head against Erwin's chest. Just for a little while, he insisted. His breathing deepened in seconds.

 

*

 

"We'll discuss our options this evening," Kronos said.

"Why not now?"

"There's something I must oversee until then."

 

*

 

At 5:21 a.m., a level one incursion was reported in upstate New York.

At 5:49, it was updated to a level five. There hadn't been a level five in nine years.

Five hundred titans and rising. Significant radical presence. Torrential rains. Rapid movement toward metropolitan areas.

Erwin observed from the Security hub. Mike and Hange dropped everything to fly back. Nanaba issued a global alert. The New York division was deployed in full. 

The incursion commander was killed within the hour.

The acting commander was killed in minutes. The pattern repeated. Leadership on the ground collapsed. Order collapsed. Agents disbanded or lingered helplessly like lost lambs. Fatality figures - including agents and civilians - doubled on the hour, every hour. Firefly nets in surrounding areas detected pockets of titans moving toward Manahattan Island.

They had never seen an incursion like this. Nanaba considered breaking their scale and marking this the first level six in history. 

Erwin found an empty conference room and opened a line between himself, Mike and Nanaba.

Mike spoke before the video feed had even blinked on. "Erwin, no to everything you're about to say-"

"Erwin," Nanaba said, "we're rerouting commanders from the Jersey and Connecticut divisions-"

"You're sending these agents to their deaths,” Erwin said. “We know who this is. Use me as bait-"

Mike groaned as Nanaba said. "They need an incursion commander-"

"We've lost nine commanding officers in two hours," Erwin said. "This is too clean. Don't pretend you don't know who this is-"

"We don't know anything-" Nanaba started.

"It doesn't matter who it is-" Mike said.

"Yes, it does," Erwin said. "And I think you're both fools for treating this like just another incursion while good agents die-"

Mike said to Nanaba, "We shouldn't be having this conversation with him, he's not fit to-"

Hange entered the call. "Hello, hello. Uh, Erwin? Get to it, man, what are you sitting around for?"

Erwin sighed. "Thanks, Hange-"

"No!" Mike said. "No thanks, Hange! Erwin, you can't just-"

"We're getting reports that three incursion commanders were killed by blunt force trauma, six from crashing their bikes-" Erwin said. "Crashing their bikes? Seasoned officers with a century's experience between them, on familiar terrain?"

"The radicals-" Nanaba said.

"Radicals are idiots," Hange chimed in.

"Mike, the radicals are a cover," Erwin pleaded, "You know how many sleeper agents Kronos revealed to us. You processed them yourself. Do you really believe there aren't more?"

"What I think," Mike said, trying at calm, "is that our Jersey and Connecticut commanders should fly out  _now_ -"

"And leave those divisions vulnerable?" Hange asked.

"We need-"

Erwin left the call. He couldn't do this gross disservice to the Survey Corps, couldn't bicker while agents died. He turned. Dragunov watched him, leaning against the far wall with crossed arms. He had let himself in.

"He's not even being subtle about it," Dragunov said. "Everyone but us is off on some field trip at the same time? Incursion commanders dropping like flies? He's baiting you."

"Do we let the city suffer?"

"We know why he's doing this.. The lock is slipping. The time dilation's probably already started. We're close. We just have to wait him out.

"How long?"

"A week, at least."

"And let the city go?"

"I don't know."

Erwin scowled. "Would I be any different, then?"

Dragunov said with too little conviction, "It's not the same-"

"You don't believe that. You doubted Kronos for bombing a few isolated, understaffed bases. This is a city of millions. Four hours and the death toll is higher than that of the entire Sunbelt Incursion."

Dragunov said nothing. The Security hub was a kicked hive beyond the door. They didn't have time.

"Fuck," Dragunov breathed. "Which chopper are we taking?"

 

*

 

Levi passed the tower panes, beyond which a window in an old building flashed once. Twice. 

Soundlessly, he followed Kronos until they neared his office, though Levi knew he intended to pass it and assume command at a lower floor. As they approached the door, Levi stepped closer, letting his steps fall just hard enough for Kronos to catch the sound, and pulled him inside.

“You don't need to be there for every little thing,” Levi said, pulling him toward the desk chair and not giving him the time to reply. 

"Levi-"

Levi shoved him into the chair.

Kronos played at indifference, though the stiffness in his limbs betrayed him. “Well, I prefer to be nearby when-”

Levi slipped into his lap and wound his hands through the sweeping strands of his hair. “You've got a phone. Good reception. Always did work too fucking hard.” 

Levi didn't like how put together he still looked, so he pulled. Kronos' head tipped back. He sighed sharply through his parted mouth. 

"Here," Levi said, pulling the phone out of the man's jacket and pushing it into his slackened hand. “Don't let me stop you,” Levi said before drawing his teeth along the heartbeat at his neck.

 

*

 

Erwin knew he would never fly a helidisc again, but he knew who might be a more than satisfying replacement.

Dragunov had the benefit of both Levi's muscle memory and of surfacing memories of the technical operation of the disc. They performed a test run outside the chopper. His flight was indistinguishable from Levi's.

The chopper joined the scattered fleet. Morale skyrocketed. Most agents hadn't heard Erwin's voice in months.

For an hour, Erwin assigned one team to distract the horde while others drilled trenches into the earth half a mile from their position. When the front guard grew weary and bikes sputtered, Erwin announced a retreat and ordered each squad to direct pockets of titans toward the trenches as soon as drill teams evacuated and started again another half-mile away.

Meanwhile, Dragunov sighted radicals and announced suspicious targets to snipers flanking the advancing beasts. There were too many radicals to pick off one by one, but Dragunov was able to pick out enough of Kronos' agents playing the part of the hysterical, gun-toting zealots they surrounded themselves in that within the hour, the last of the radical bands had either dispersed or were themselves crushed by titan feet and jaws and teeth.

The horde was halved in hours, but it wasn't enough. Their last helidisc fliers were downed. They needed at last one in the air to bait titans from above.

Dragunov yanked the harness out of a compartment and snapped it into place across his arms, hips and chest. He opened the cabin door. Rain thundered against the waiting disc.

“Levi,” Erwin called. 

Dragunov turned.

“Before you go, promise me one thing.”

 

*

 

A lone figure slipped out of the Survey Armory and broke into a run as voices rose behind them. They threw themself out of the five story window, activated their stolen helidisc as they pummeled to the earth, and pulled up before they grazed the ground. They tailed the black chopper out of the city.

 

*

 

His thumb passes over Levi's lips, and Levi stilled from the shock of the sense memory. This body knew that motion. He leaned into it.

“You miss him,” Kronos murmured.

A rapid alarm rose from his phone. Kronos took it with his other hand as Levi closed his teeth over the thumb of his other and leaned more heavily against him. The message was clear. Stay.

“Report,” Kronos said into the receiver. Levi raked his teeth over right ear, unmarred, and slipped his tongue over his jaw. Kronos swallowed.

“Subject in position,” said the agent on the other side.

“Good,” Kronos said, almost purred as Levi's mouth moved down his throat.

“When can we expect your-”

“She will coordinate the op,” Kronos said.

“Sir-”

“I have full faith in her,” he said. Levi pulled the phone away from him and shut it off. Kronos let him.

He sighed haltingly as Levi nipped at his jaw. “We can pretend. I wont say a word.”

Kronos tried to not touch him with the titanium hand. Levi guided it to his hip. He didn't want to pretend. He didn't want to forget who this was for.

 

*

 

Erwin routed him through the titan horde. Dragunov raked his blades across a titan's nape.

 

*

Levi raked his nails across Kronos' nape.

His mind fogged. He began to forget, even with the bite of hard, cool titanium playing with the hem of his shirt. He wondered for a moment if Erwin tasted like this, if he would have touched him like this.

He wouldn't. The Erwin he knew might have spared a kiss or a warm touch but he'd never known him to go further, to want to go further, and that was fine by him, that was perfect by him, but that wasn't the man touching him now like he couldn’t breathe if he didn't trace the notches of his spine, couldn’t live without stoking tremors in his thighs.

 

*

 

The chopper flew high, but the titans saw it even so. The wind must have changed. They could smell them,

They lobbed boulders, trees, even one another. A spinning tree caught on their landing skids.

The pilot brought them down in a controlled descent before the weight of the extra load destabilized the craft entirely. Ground agents below converged on their location to pass their bikes over to Erwin, the pilot and copilot as they doubled up on a fellow agent's bike.

It was too dangerous to stay in the area and dislodge the tree. Erwin ordered the pilots to evacuate and rode ahead himself, careful not to jostle the rifle attached to the bike's underside.

“Turn back,” Dragunov growled through his earpiece.

“You need another set of eyes-”

“I need you to not keel over in the middle of-” He was interrupted by a wild gust of wind and a titan's plaintive groans. “We agreed – you had to stay in the air.”

“We'll have to make do,” Erwin said, coming up behind a pocket of titans as he rode to higher ground.

But the titans weren't content to let him go. They blundered after him. They shrieked. The ground trembled.

There wasn't enough room to maneuver away from one without riding into the jaws of another. Dragunov wouldn't be able to fly him out without killing the disc's engine or halving the time before needing to stop and let the radiator cool down.

“Fly to the next trench and regroup,” Erwin said to Dragunov.

“What about-”

“That was a direct order.”

A titan snapped at his heels. Erwin turned sharply, reflexively, and moved right into the path of an open set of jaws. It was too late to turn again.

Dragunov sliced the titan's lower jaw clean off. The titan wailed as Erwin just narrowly passed it and wove through a thicket of trees. Dragunov circled back and rose before diving back in like a bird of prey and carving a path through the beasts.

Erwin hadn't seen the titan approaching before its shadow fell on him from overhead, before the wild blur that was Dragunov and his disc collided with the beast's skull. As it toppled, one of its arms caught on his rear wheel. Erwin was sent skidding. As he fell to the orchestra of crashing metal and titan howl, he couldn't tell the earth from the sky.

 

*

 

A sudden flurry of movement, and Levi couldn't tell himself from Kronos before he felt the desk against his back.

Levi scratched him and touched him and Kronos bit his neck, grazed his teeth along his pulse and whispered promises into the hollow of his throat.

Kronos worshiped him. Dragunov's body remembered this, too.

 

*

 

Erwin landed hard. Wild, plaintive groans snapped his eyes open. He forced his battered limbs and protesting lungs to cooperate. He could hardly hear over his rattled breath.

He saw him. Dragunov had crashed, too, had bludgeoned into the titan and sent them both to the ground. Erwin couldn't see him through the tangle of underbrush and the harsh steam of titan blood. The titan's hand descended.

Erwin bent down, snuck to the fallen bike and unclasped the rifle from its underside.

Dragunov, still visibly dazed, struggled in the titan's rising hand, its gnarled thumb against his throat.

Erwin raised the rifle and fired.

 

*

 

Kronos' hand tightened on his throat and Levi moaned and canted his hips and his eyes rolled shut.

 

*

 

Erwin felt the ground tremble behind him. He didn't stop firing.

The titan dropped Dragunov. It clawed at its burst eyes and bullet-ridden skull.

The trembling became greater. Erwin didn't stop firing. He’ll feel the fingers closing on him soon enough. Dragunov had to escape.

But the stomping ended. All he heard behind him was a plaintive whine before he turned and momentarily caught the Threader's hair-thin threads squeezing the beast in its punishing lattice as it exploded in a shower of gore. The proximity knocked Erwin to the ground.

 

*

 

Kronos kissed him lazily as he cleaned them up. Levi licked into his mouth as Kronos buttoned Levi's shirt and smoothed the collar.

Levi breathed heavily. His eyes darted to the clock on the far wall. It should be enough. It had to be enough.

“I'm glad you're making friends outside the tower,” Kronos said. “Just don't indulge Beckert and Foley's revenge fantasies too much.”

Levi's gut dropped. He knew.

Kronos buttoned his own shirt. “Clever, too, to let them try to sneak in through the ventilation system jut now. A little severe of you. I'm sure you know about the failsafe.”

Levi's heart pounded in his ears. “Of course,” he fibbed, and Kronos smiled like he knew it.

“The one that can temporarily isolate sections and poison whoever is inside,” Kronos said indifferently. ”I didn't know you had it in you.”

Kronos slipped on his jacket.

“Wait,” Levi said. He didn't look at Kronos. He couldn't look at him. “Let them go.”

Kronos swept a hand through Levi’s damp hair. His palm had the heat of a brand.

“It was activated five minutes ago.”

 

*

 

The grass was cool and damp beneath him. The rain had slowed to a drizzle.

He couldn't move. The wind was knocked out of him by the exploding titan, sure, but it felt different. He wasn't in shock. He was restrained.

When he came to entirely, he picked up a familiar voice. It couldn't be. “No,” he breathed.

Egret bent down. “Long time no see, stranger.”

She'd escaped.

Erwin breathed harshly. “Should I assume everything,” he breathed again, “everything there is to assume by your being here?”

Egret gave him a terse, apologetic smile, though Erwin couldn't begin to understand why it wasn't a joyous one. She played them all, had been Kronos' agent all this time. All that smoke about possibly being one of the sisters' agents had been a distraction, another way to paint Kronos the victim.

“Sorry chief,” she said. “You were taking too long.”

Then Kronos never intended to let Erwin decide.

More of Kronos' agents arrived in a pair of nondescript black vans. Every titan in the area was dead. Erwin was hoisted up and led to one of the vans. Dragunov stood behind Egret, breathing as heavily and painted scarlet with titan remains. He said nothing to stop her, to him, to any of them. He watched the agents lead Erwin away, unreadable.

Egret passed Erwin's derringer to Dragunov. They must have searched him.

Erwin's breath caught. His ring was gone. It was the only way they could be tracked.

“Yours too,” he heard Egret said. Erwin turned as Dragunov pulled off his own ring. Egret handed them to another agent who then took off on their bike. Probably to throw them in a river, or to lead Survey on a wild chase.

Egret strode ahead as Erwin was hauled into the van. She turned to Dragunov. “Coming?”

“Yeah,” he said, passing Erwin without a glance. “I’m coming.”

“Lucky you,” Egret said to Dragunov over her shoulder. “you’ll be the right there when he switches.“

 

*

 

The lone flier watched the vans split from the bike. They hurtled toward the vans, waiting until they passed through denser vegetation before flying in low and using canopy cover to soar closer and drop a tracker on the roof of each vehicle.

They pulled up and flew back to the city, waiting for a favorable current to ride on before turning their phone back on. It pinged with dozens of texts and voice messages. She placed a call.

"Isabel, where the hell are you?" Farlan yelled as soon as he picked up. "We've lost contact with Erwin and Levi-"

"I know where they are."

 

*

 

The Pond was freezing. Erwin let the technicians lower him inside. He knew they could as easily inject him with something that made him as pliable as they pleased. There was no sense in struggling now.

Though he had been blindfolded on the way there, he knew the atrium that housed the Pond had to be underground. It was enormous. The Pond itself was in the very center. Cables radiated and snaked up the walls and ceiling. He shivered at the water, though he'd only been stripped of his shoes and jacket. The glass doors shut, and all sound was lost to him but the hum of the machine and the sloshing of the water.

As the technicians calibrated the Pond at the consoles attached to its sides, Erwin caught increasingly frenzied movement from Egret and her agents, easily a hundred in number. Something had them spooked. He he could see it in their faces.

Dragunov lingered by the Pond as he shouted something to each agent and positioned them along each entryway into the atrium.

So they had been found.

He watched Dragunov wave aside an agent offering him a rifle and say something to him. A few moments later, the same agent returned with a pair of multichambered electroshock pistols. Erwin recognized them. Each one could fell a dozen grown men, but it wouldn't kill them.

Maybe Erwin shouldn’t have been surprised. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. 

The fluid rose above his nose and his mouth. The animated interior cords attached themselves to his spine. Dragunov – Levi – watched him shut his eyes.

 

*

 

Levi followed Kronos to the atrium. He knew why they were there. He knew what was about to happen. Egret waved at them as the doors opened.

“Erwin agreed!” she crowed.

“Of course he did,” Kronos said. “Levi's very convincing.”

It took a moment to register that Kronos was speaking of Dragunov. It was the first time he didn't use the name since Levi switched.

The atrium had never been so dense with guards and technicians. Even lab operators and patients had come up to see. The technicians gushed about how rare a bounce switch was, how much precision it took to complete it, how brave Kronos was to attempt it.

Levi pretended he didn't see the heavy guard in the atrium, pretended he didn't notice that all their eyes were trained on him and him only.

The guard captain approached Kronos as the Pond opened.

“Sir, we still don't have orders for Core Smith's security detail.”

“No detail. Give him a hot meal. Then bring him to the piers and wait.”

The guard captain blinked owlishly. “Without a guard?”

“Without a guard. Press charges against Rose, Maria and Sina within twelve hours and release tapes of the altercation to the public.”

Kronos intended to send him out to slaughter and use his death to bury the sisters.

Levi couldn't help it. He laughed. It was a setup from the very beginning. Leave one world a martyr and enter the other a hero.

The guard captain tensed as Levi stepped toward Kronos. “Why don't I just shoot him myself?”

 

*

 

Dragunov watched him close his eyes. The Pond hummed a deep, bone-rattling bass. The floor shook with it.

He ordered the agents and their division leaders to strategic locations. He had a perfect view of all of them from his vantage point, knew exactly where to direct them in a firefight. Somehow, somewhere, they had made a mistake. The Survey Corps was at their door.

The technicians flinched as shouts and gunfire erupted just beyond the atrium. Dragunov palmed the derringer in his jacket.

 

*

 

Levi couldn't understand it. Kronos almost looked hurt.

“You were never my enemy,” Kronos said. He dismissed the guard captain and stepped closer, spoke so that no one else would overhear. “Not you, not him. But I know him. I know him like I know myself. And he doesn't understand. I know, because in his place, I wouldn't understand either. For the longest time, I thought the world began and ended with my excruciatingly narrow understanding of it. But there's more. More than petty agency. More than an uncontrolled decent into extinction, into obscurity. So much that your Erwin stubbornly, selfishly refuses to see. Hate me, Levi. I understand why you would. But I can't think of a greater evil than a man so selfish that he would deny his people paradise. I won't allow him or any instance of him even the potential to stop me.”

And though he'd turned to slip off his jacket and step into the Pond, he said over his shoulder as an afterthought, “And you were never a threat to me. Not you. Not Dragunov.”

The pod closed.

 

*

 

The pod opened.

Dragunov watched Kronos open his eyes. Technicians, spooked and flinching at every bang and  _ratatat_ , gave Kronos the go-ahead to move.

Dragunov helped him out. Kronos' breath hitched from the chill of the water. Dragunov draped his jacket over him and hurriedly slipped on his shoes. As he stood, Kronos gentled him close and embraced him.

Kronos breathed haltingly into his hair. “Levi-” A sharp bang outside the atrium nearly deafened them. “You're here,” Kronos said when the ringing in his ears abated.

Dragunov wound his arms around him. He glanced at his right ear.

“I promised,” he said.

Shouts echoed from beyond the door. The agents Dragunov had positioned took their posts, their backs to them. Egret had shown him the emergency exit. The escape route. If they left now, Survey would never find them.

Egret watched them, gestured for Dragunov to go.

“You did it,” Kronos said breathlessly. He pulled away, took his hand, and started for the emergency exit.

“Not yet,” Dragunov said, pulled him back, and slit his throat.

In the same motion, he slipped out the electroshock pistol, pressed Kronos to him, and fired at the backs of the exposed agents, the agents he'd positioned so as to get the cleanest shot, as he moved clear of the Pond. One. Two. Three.

The technicians had long since abandoned their posts in horror. Those who reached for a weapon were shot. Four. Five. Those who shouted for assistance were shot. Six. Seven. Eight. One entryway was blown open on the opposite end of the atrium. Survey agents streamed in.

There was no cover. There was no escape route. The Pond was in the center of the atrium. Nothing else surrounded it for meters but cables snaking along the floor.

Kronos pressed one hand to his streaming neck and another around Dragunov, who fired at any agents who attempted to fire or to come near and extract Kronos. Nine. Ten. If Dragunov had any time at all to guess, the man was, for some reason, doing his best impression of a human shield. He was sure he had turned to absorb at least two answering shots. Eleven. Twelve.

That was, until Dragunov gasped as Kronos pulled him forcibly to the side, and it wasn't until Dragunov threw the dead pistol aside, pressed the derringers' barrel to his head and fired that he realized he had pulled Dragunov away from a shot coming from an agent at his back.

Kronos' body went slack. Dragunov dropped the derringer from shock.

His vision whitened from a lance of pain, then another, and a third. He buckled to his knees and just barely caught Egret moving out to land another bead on him before he put one between her eyes.

He couldn't hold himself up. He breathed harshly, lungs fighting and heart ramming against his ribs despite all its efforts going to waste against the atrium floor.

He laid Kronos – Erwin – down. He rested his heavy head against his chest. Just for a little while.

He watched their blood mingle as his vision darkened. The scarlet ebbed like a gentle tide.

 

*

 

Levi ducked as the atrium doors blew open.

Plainclothes agents stormed the atrium.

Levi stunned a guard, grabbed his firearm and aimed where he'd last seen Egret, but she was already down.

Someone got lucky and landed a bead in his left arm. Levi ducked, brows tight with pain, and took advantage of the confusion to find the guard captain and knock him out. Without command, the guards became directionless and agitated, easier to pick off.

Three of the plainclothes agents corralled the technicians to safer ground while others split and either dispatched the rest of the guards or restrained the ones who surrendered.

Levi rounded on one of the invading agents as soon as all gunfire stopped. “Where is she?” he demanded.

“Comin' up,” they said.

He turned, then, to the technicians. “Reverse it.”

“We can't-”

“Then drag him out,” he snapped.

“Don't be so mean,” he heard behind him. He turned. Isabel frowned at him from the atrium doors.

He ran to her. He embraced her with his uninjured arm. “Good work,” he said.

If he had Dragunov to thank for anything, it was this. For lending him the memories of Isabel, who alone survived, who was his alone to have, apart from Kronos or his empire or any of his agents or even the sisters. Isabel made her own way after the crash, after Farlan was gone and after Dragunov turned to wetwork, thinking them both dead.

Only when Dragunov joined Kronos did Isabel come out of hiding to warn him of the risk of associating with the man. Kronos never knew. Levi remembered that meeting. He remembered everything.

Beckert and Foley had infiltrated the tower and had been willing to get caught to distract Kronos' agents from Isabel, who used the security breech to lead Beckert and Foley's fellow agents – agents, too, long since sick of Kronos' tight control of Titania and his using this world as a base of operations as he meddles with other worlds - to the atrium.

And Levi, in turn, had distracted Kronos in the most obvious way he could imagine, and in a way that Kronos was bound to understand to be a distraction, especially after Levi grew increasingly - purposefully - sloppy in hiding his meetings with Beckert. He had to make him believe that the resistance ended with Beckert and Foley, and not someone else. Someone like Isabel.

Levi pulled away. “Beckert-”

“They're fine. Recovering.”

“Sir!” A technician called. “We can't budge it while the bounce switch is in progress-”

“Then stop the switch.”

“We can't-”

Suddenly, Levi felt it. A searing full-bodied pain radiating from his heart to the tips of his fingers and toes. His knees buckled. His vision whitened. Isabel held him upright and shook him gently, calling his name.

“'M alright,” he slurred. But not Dragunov. He didn't know how he knew it, wouldn't be able to explain it if he tried. But Dragunov was dead.

One by one, scores of Kronos agents keeled over in the same way. Egret breathed heavily, restrained and propped against a wall. Her counterpart must have died, too.

“Shit,” said the guard captain. Levi turned. The man's eyes darted wildly from where he picked himself off the ground, as if he had just woken up.

“He just switched,” Isabel said. Levi barreled over to him.

“What's happening?" Levi asked. "What's on the other side?”

The guard captain blinked blearily. After a steadying breath, he took a steel box out of his armor and held it out.

“Hard drive inside,” he said. “Access codes. Everything from the Pond to the labs.”

Levi took it warily. “Why-”

“Boss' orders. Said if he lived, to hand it to Red Egret. If he didn't – it's yours.”

“He's-” Levi froze. He couldn't mean that.

Another agent switched over. He confirmed it. Egret's counterpart was dead. Dragunov was dead. Kronos was dead.

Levi's ears rang. It was over. It was finally over.

“Where's Erwin?” he demanded of the technicians, turning wildly from one to another. “Where the hell is he? The Erwin from Core?”

A technician tapping furiously at the panel said, “Mr. Smith's coordinates switched him back to his birth universe.”

“What? Why?”

“Mr. Smith wasn't naturally attached to Core. But he was mutually attached to the same universe as his Core counterpart-”

The world with the walls.

It couldn't be. He was sure Kronos had meant to perform a direct switch But as he wracked his mind, he couldn't remember when anyone had actually confirmed who was to take Kronos' place. And then he remembered the words from the man himself:

 

“ _I won't allow him_ _ **or any instance of him**_ _even the potential to stop me.”_

 

“Bring him back.”

The technicians eyed one another warily.

“Well?” Levi prompted.

“He's been switched too long.”

“What does that mean?”

Medical teams began to arrive. Isabel left with her agents to take the rest of the tower.

Another technician spoke up. “Mr. Smith's Core counterpart was switched with his counterpart from the tertiary universe for almost thirty years. That kind of stress on the intrauniversal membrane just doesn't go away-”

“English,  _please_ , in English-”

“Once the original switch is reversed, they can never be switched again.”

None of this made sense. He had also been switched, too, and for fifteen years. Kronos said himself that he could be switched.

The technicians corrected him in no uncertain terms.

Levi breathed heavily. He hardly noticed a medic sitting him down to take the bullet out of his arm and stem the bleeding.

Erwin couldn't come back. Ever. His mind was gone, and now so was his body. Not that it mattered. Levi couldn't go back either. There was nowhere to go from here.

Kronos was gone. He should be ecstatic. He'd never known a more Pyrrhic victory.

Levi turned to Kronos' body. “Then who-”

Just then, his body stirred. The technicians flocked to the console to try the shutdown procedure again, but there was no need. The waters receded. The glass doors opened. The bounce switch was complete.

He stirred again. He gasped as if emerging from a still lake. Levi's heart slammed against his ribs. If Kronos was dead, and the Erwin he knew was stuck in the tertiary universe, then this was someone else. This was the man Erwin saw every night. It was the Erwin from the walls.

He watched the technicians pull him out. The man was unsteady on his feet. His eyes were clouded over, unfocused - until his eyes stopped at Levi.

Levi quieted the technicians, who had launched all at once into asking him everything from whether he knew where he was to how he was feeling to how many fingers they were holding up – the last one, Levi hoped, was a joke.

But once he found Levi, Erwin had eyes for no one else.

“Quit crowding him,” Levi snapped. The curious crowddispersed, save for the technicians and a medical officer checking Erwin's eyes with a pin-light and listening to his heart. Levi swallowed nervously. For a few long moments, he could only look at him, and Erwin looked right back, each at a man they knew like they knew their own souls and yet, separated by machines and by birth and by circumstance.

“Do you know where you are?” Levi made himself ask.

It must have been the wrong question, because Erwin's face fell. He shook his head as he pointed to Levi and then to his own ear. Levi didn't understand until Erwin spoke. Until the words that came out of his mouth were no words Levi could understand.

Of course he couldn't understand them. Levi had been so spoiled by Kronos' tower, by his efforts to replicate Core's language and mannerisms in their little microcosm, that he hadn't even considered that this Erwin, too, was from a world entirely unlike their own.

“Don't be so glum,” Isabel said as the technicians led Erwin away. “Look like you ate a lemon.”

“Where are they-”

“The Switch Wing.”

Kronos had mentioned it, had invited Levi to see it, but something about the place unnerved him. The Switch Wing tutored agents in the language and mannerisms of their assigned universe prior to a switch, and rehabilitated those who switched back after an extended stay in another world. Like a playground at night or an abandoned motel or the Pond itself, it was one of those liminal places where universes merged not through some cosmic venture but through the dissemination of ideas and tastes and words and people that, without the interference of the Pond, would have never been able to meet.

But it was there that the tower's experts could disseminate an unfamiliar language and bring them closer to understanding Erwin, so it was there that he was led.

Levi was barred from seeing him. Though he was effectively their boss – which itself was taking its time to sink in – so many agents had been switched back and forth with such a nuanced understanding of Core that he figured the Wing knew what it was doing. He considered asking this Erwin where and when he came from to get an idea of where Core Erwin was, but that, too, was a dead lead. Kronos hadn't been as nuanced with time as he was with place. The Erwin Levi knew could have been switched into a body taking its dying breath, for all he knew. He didn't think about it again.

Day and night, Erwin worked with Switch Wing linguists, stopping only to sleep and eat, and only then, not a second more than the minimum that the Wing demanded.

Levi manned Kronos' empire while Erwin was away. Individual operations were remarkably self-sufficient, so Levi's interference was unneeded in Titania production nor patient acquisition and care, nor even the upkeep of security systems. Curiously, the entire system appeared to have been designed in such a way that it easily survived being passed on to different leadership. Maybe Kronos had been more anxious about his mortality than he let on.

Levi was starting to forget. Having secured any immediate entanglements and making sure that the tower was secure, Levi spent his remaining hours taking Beckert's advice and writing down as much as he could before he lost anything more.

He told Isabel about Farlan. About Firefly. She loved that. She wouldn't forget.

The lock was no more. There was no recalibrating this universe with the one with the walls. There was no reversing the switch. There was no looking back.

The sisters decided to make themselves known.

The couriers who delivered raw materials for Titania production barely returned with their skin. Pot shots echoed throughout the tower at all hours of the day. News must have reached them – though of what exactly, Levi wasn't sure. Some reports had it that Kronos was dead. Others, that he was gravely ill. No switch was mentioned in any intercepted reports.

They would have to retaliate soon, and decisively. Opening Titania to the public would accomplish nothing if all the sisters had to do was to shut down independent production by force and offer it themselves for a fortune and a half – assuming they wouldn't just destroy it. No. There was no coexisting with them. They had to go. If Erwin's Goliath was Intermipol, then the sisters were Levi's.

The Switch Wing chief cleared Erwin for visitors in a week's time. Levi was reminded again of this world's technological capacity when the chief offered him a hearing aid calibrated to translate Erwin's speech to Levi, and Levi's to Erwin. It even used a synthesizer to replicate the speaker's voice.

Erwin was receptive, but guarded. He had been given as short a summary as can be had about the switch, and about the world he had been switched into. Erwin only remembered entering a basement and blacking out – or, possibly, being knocked out – before waking up in a tower higher than any wall and to the sight of a man as much a stranger as he was a friend. Levi didn't push. Erwin was taking his forced switch with far more grace than Levi had.

Certain subjects were unapproachable simply because of the danger of miscommunication should anything become lost in translation, but Erwin seemed to understand that. The translation software, at first clunky, improved by the day as Erwin fed it more information.

The translation was so nuanced by the second week that the chief sanctioned approaching Erwin with the subject of Titania. Of Kronos. Levi gave the chief the go-ahead. He wasn't going to drag this out. He owed that to Erwin – any Erwin.

So Erwin visited the clinics. He spoke to the patients. For the first time, when he returned to his room in the Wing, he didn't work on the translator. He sat by the window for hours. He didn't eat. He couldn't sleep. The chief worried. Levi understood. This wasn't the kind of revelation that went down quickly or gracefully.

Levi tolerated it for two days before paying him a visit. He didn't speak to him and didn't encourage Erwin to speak either. Levi wordlessly pulled up another chair by the window, pulled out his journal, and kept writing. When it was clear that Levi intended to stay, Erwin smiled to himself. Levi wasn't sure why.

“You look like him,” Erwin said suddenly.

Levi looked up. It wasn't the translator. It was slow, and a little clunky at the end, but Erwin had said it himself. In plain English. A furious flush of shame clipped his tongue at not having thought to learn Erwin's language in turn, despite knowing he could have never caught on this quickly.

“Yeah,” Levi said tightly.

“Sound like him.”

“Yep.”

Erwin glanced at the journal. “But you're not my- you're not the Levi I know.”

“No.”

Erwin nodded as if this made perfect sense. Then, he laughed softly. "How is all this possible?"

"No idea."

"They told me I can never go back."

"Same here."

"They told me I belong here."

"They tell me I belong here, too."

"Do you?”

"I don't like anyone telling me where I do or don't belong."

Erwin smiled, as if there was something in the words he recognized. "What happens now?"

“Lots to do,” Levi said. He closed the journal. "What were you doing before all this?"

Erwin hesitated. He searched for the words before saying, "It's a little...out there-"

Levi blinked. "We just told you the multiverse exists. That Titania exists. I can take it."

“I may have been in the middle of deposing a king.”

“Huh. Good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah. Cause we’re gonna depose a few queens.”

 

*

Hange slips into the abandoned atrium.

The Survey Corps thrives. Without any remaining existential or political threat, estimates say that titans could be eradicated within months. Some even suggest weeks.

Mike and Nanaba marry. Farlan extends the Firefly network to nearly every major city in the world. Isabel trains the next generation of helidisc fliers.

Erwin and Levi's ashes are cast into the sea.

Kronos was both right and wrong about Titania. It was difficult to create the stabilizing agent, but not nearly as much as he had made it out to be. It may take years to do it, but it was possible. If opened up to the global scientific community, it could be synthesized faster that even he thought possible. 

It wasn't over. It would catalyze humanity's next great debate, but it would be their debate and their tipping point. They would be beholden to no one but themselves.

No other Ponds had been found. One by one, Kronos' remaining sleeper agents revealed themselves once they switched back for more instruction and realized that their services were no longer needed. Soon, the time dilation grew so great between them that they were unable to contact them at all. Maybe never again.

They should destroy the Pond.

Erwin once said something about gilded cages.

They should destroy the Pond.

Hange taps on the console. They bring up the map, and the blue glow washes over their face.

Maybe.

 

*

 

A man with glasses, dark sweeping hair and a worried brow helped Erwin out of the basement. He smuggled him out of a familiar and unfamiliar city and left him at the steps of a compound with flags marked by crossed blades.

He could breath again and walk again. He wasn't sick anymore. He was also a lot smaller. His voice, a touch higher. His body couldn't have been a day over fifteen.

That first night in the barracks, he planned a course back to the city to return to the basement.

That morning, he couldn’t remember Levi's name.  

In a week, he couldn't remember anyone else's.

In two weeks, he'd couldn't remember there having been a basement at all. Even when, decades later, he held its key in his hand.

 

Erwin strode atop Wall Rose.

“Hey.”

He turned at the hiss and whip of gas and wire as Levi joined him. The sun was rising. The town was stirring. Soldiers wound their way to the wall.

 "You're sure?" Levi asked suddenly. He held a metal box to his chest. "You trust me with this?"

Erwin couldn't remember that he had once before asked this man to do what he thought was right.

 He gave Levi a reassuring smile.

“I do.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
